Heil manufactured dump trucks. A truck owned by Rogers
and driven by Brashear was delivering a load of gravel to Bowling. The
dumper got stuck, so Bowling crawled underneath the truck to see what was
wrong. He figured it out, got it unstuck, and it collapsed on top of him.
Bowling's family sued Heil and others claiming product
liability.
The Trial Court found for Bowling and awarded $1.75M.
Heil appealed.
The Trial Court found that Bowling was contributorily
negligent, but that he had not assumed the risk.
The Appellate Court affirmed, but reduced the damages by
30%
The Trial Court had found that Bowling was 30% negligent.
That's using comparative negligence, not contributory
negligence as a standard.
The Appellate Court found a 'middle ground' of negligence
called 'affirmative action' somewhere between a plaintiff's failure to
discover or guard against a defect and his voluntary assumption of a
known risk.
The Ohio Supreme Court reinstated the original $1.75M.
The Ohio Supreme Court found that there are two
affirmative defenses available for strict liability:
A defendant has a complete defense if a plaintiff
voluntarily and knowingly assumed the risk occasioned by the defect.
A defendant has a complete defense if a plaintiff
misused the product in an unforeseeable manner.
The Court looked to Restatement of Torts
§402A(n) and came to the conclusion that either a plaintiff's contributory
negligence amounts to a voluntary assumption of a known risk
or it does not. If it does not, then contributory negligence of
the plaintiff provides no defense to the defendant.
Basically, the Court said that comparative
negligence (where you recover a percentage based on how negligent you
were) is not appropriate for product liability. Instead, you
should use contributory negligence (where the plaintiff gets full
recovery unless they were more than 50% at fault, in which case they get
nothing.)
Product liability is not about the plaintiff, it
is about whether or not the company is producing a defective product.
