Source: https://www.dayontorts.com/category/cat-products-liability
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 20:27:09+00:00

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Products Liability Category Archives — Day on Torts Published by Day on Torts — Tennessee Personal Injury Attorney — The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.
Tennessee products liability claims are subject to a ten-year statute of repose, and that limitation period is not subject to equitable estoppel.
In Ismoilov v. Sears Holdings Corporation, No. M2017-00897-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. April 25, 2018), plaintiff brought a products liability suit based on a water heater that broke, causing a leak and damaging his property. The water heater in question was purchased on June 2, 2005, and plaintiff asserted that it was sold with a 12-year warranty. Plaintiff filed his suit on June 16, 2015, seeking damages for property damage to his home, unpaid rent, reduced rental value and cleaning fees. It was undisputed that defendant had replaced the water heater before the suit was filed.
The trial court dismissed all claims other than the warranty claims on a motion for judgment on the pleadings, finding that the claims all sounded in product liability and were time barred by the ten-year statute of repose. The trial court subsequently granted defendant summary judgment on the express warranty claim after defendant put forth evidence that the express warranty included replacement of the damaged heater only. Plaintiff appealed these findings, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
In Tatham v. Bridgestone Americas Holding, Inc., No. W2013-02604-SC-R11-CV (Tenn. Oct. 30, 2015), plaintiff brought a product liability action against defendants after her tire blew out and caused her to have a car accident, breaking her back. Plaintiff purchased rear tires for her vehicle from Firestone Complete Auto Care. She chose the tires because they were “the best value,” but could not remember whether the sales associate discussed any warranties with her. After having the tires installed, plaintiff never tested the air pressure and did not recall running over anything or having any problems with the tires. Less than three months after purchasing the tires, plaintiff was driving on the interstate when one of the tires suddenly failed, causing her to hit the guardrail and flip her car. According to a witness driving behind plaintiff, plaintiff was driving normally and a piece of black was flapping from the tire before the accident. When plaintiff’s car began to veer off the road, the witness saw something black that looked like pieces of a blow-out come out from under plaintiff’s car.
After the accident, a wrecker service towed plaintiff’s car, and her insurance company informed her the car was totaled. At the recommendation of her insurance company, plaintiff signed the title of her car over to the wrecker service, who subsequently destroyed the vehicle and tire. At this time, plaintiff had not yet hired an attorney. Eventually plaintiff did retain counsel and brought this product liability action on the grounds of strict liability, negligence, and breaches of the implied warranty of fitness, implied warranty of merchantability, and duty to warn.
Defendants moved for summary judgment two times, which the trial court denied. Defendants appealed, citing three issues: 1) whether the case should have been dismissed as a sanction for spoliation of evidence with regards to the destruction of the tire; 2) whether the trial court should have granted summary judgment as to causation and the issue of whether the tire was defective or unreasonably dangerous; and 3) whether the trial court should have granted summary judgment because Tennessee allegedly does not recognize the apparent manufacture doctrine.
In Bradley v. Ameristep, Inc., No. 1:12-cv-01196 (6th Cir. Aug. 24, 2015), plaintiff appealed a district court dismissal of his product liability claims regarding ratchet straps he had purchased and used to secure a hunting treestand. Plaintiff bought the straps in 2007 or 2008, used the straps to secure his treestand for less than two months in 2008, stored the straps inside for almost three years, then used the straps to secure his treestand again in May or June 2011. He did not use the treestand until September 2011, at which time he visually inspected the straps. After plaintiff claimed into the stand, the straps broke and caused plaintiff to fall.
Plaintiff retained two expert witnesses to support his claims, but the district court granted defendant’s motion to exclude both of these experts. Because the expert testimony was excluded, the district court “concluded that there was no evidence to support the plaintiffs’ claims for strict product liability or negligent design and manufacture and granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on those claims.” The district court also granted summary judgment as to the failure to warn claim, determining that plaintiff was aware of the dangers of leaving the straps exposed to the elements, that plaintiff would not have heeded a warning to use a safety harness, and that plaintiff failed to proffer an adequate alternative warning. Accordingly, all of plaintiffs’ claims were dismissed.
On appeal, the Court reversed the dismissal, and in doing so provided an informative summary of Tennessee product liability law. First, the Court addressed the exclusion of one of plaintiffs’ experts, noting that Fed. R. Evid. 702 “impose[s] a threshold requirement of qualification by ‘knowledge, skill, experience, training or education,’ coupled with a two-part test for relevance…and reliability.” While the expert’s “qualifications contain[ed] numerous general attestations of expertise in materials analysis[,]” the district court focused on specific references to the expert’s metallurgical expertise to determine that he did not possess the necessary qualifications for this case. The Court of Appeals held that this was an error, pointing out that the proposed expert had “over thirty-five years of experience analyzing the forces and conditions that lead to product failures, “ that he had “served as an instructor in materials analysis and microscopic analysis” for multiple groups and organizations, and that he had conducted analysis on all types of polymer materials. Based on these qualifications, the expert testimony should have been allowed.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals recently affirmed a refusal to dismiss a products liability case under the doctrine of forum non conveniens in Pantuso v. Wright Medical Tech. Inc., No. W2014-02135-COA-R9-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 31, 2015). Plaintiff in this case was a resident of Utah and had double hip replacement surgery in Utah. The replacement devices used in plaintiff were designed, manufactured and marketed by Wright Medical Technology, a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Memphis, Tennessee, who was registered to do business in both Tennessee and Utah. Wright Medical Technology was a wholly owned subsidiary of Wright Medical Group, a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Memphis, Tennessee, registered to do business in Tennessee. Both corporations were named as defendants.
According to the complaint, the device implanted into plaintiff was marketed as being suitable for patients with active lifestyles. Six years after the surgery, though, one of the replacement devices failed “suddenly and catastrophically” and had to be replaced. The other device made by Defendant remained in plaintiff, but he alleged that he had to modify his lifestyle based on the knowledge that it would not stand up to the active lifestyle it was marketed towards.
Plaintiff filed a product liability suit in Shelby County Circuit Court, and defendants filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to the doctrine of forum non conveniens. According to defendants, Utah was the proper forum because plaintiff had received all of his medical treatment there. Defendants argued that they would “be prejudiced by proceeding in Tennessee because it would have ‘no access to any third-party witness or any third-party documents because they were all in Utah[.]’” In addition, defendants asserted that Utah was more appropriate because Utah law applied in this case and because the Shelby County courts were already overburdened. In response, plaintiff asserted that Shelby County was a proper forum, as the “crux of his complaint concerned not the medical treatment he received [in Utah], but the decisions made by Wright Medical concerning the manufacture, design, and marketing of the Profemur hip device, all of which occurred at Wright Medical’s Memphis office.” Plaintiff urged that the witnesses relevant to the core issues of the case were located in Tennessee, that the medical providers located in Utah could submit testimony by deposition, and that one of the two defendants was not subject to personal jurisdiction in Utah.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals recently upheld the constitutionality of both the ten-year statute of repose under the Tennessee Products Liability Act (“TPLA”) and the exceptions thereunder for asbestos and silicone gel breast implant claims. In Adams v. Air Liquide America, L.P., No. M2013-02607-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 25, 2014), plaintiff filed a products liability claim related to injuries from silica exposure in his employment. Plaintiff was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, filed the claim in 2011, and it was undisputed that 1991 was the very latest time at which plaintiff could have first used or come into contact with defendants’ products. Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the action was time-barred by the ten-year statute of repose found in Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-28-103(a), and the trial court granted the motion.
On appeal, plaintiff asserted that the statute of repose violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution and Section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution because it carved out exceptions for asbestos and silicone gel breast implant related injuries, but not silica-related claims. Plaintiff asserted that the classes of claims for which there are exceptions were similarly situated to silica-related claims because both have long latency periods. According to plaintiff, there was no rational basis for distinguishing between these claims.
Recently, the Tennessee Court of Appeals reviewed the case of Lake v. The Memphis Landsmen in its third trip to the court. A number of issues were raised in the appeal, but by far the most interesting one concerned the plaintiffs’ contention that the trial court erred in including a non-party who plaintiffs previously settled with on the jury verdict form. The plaintiffs also contended that to the extent the non-party was properly included on the form, the trial court should have instructed the jury on the effect of allocating negligence to the non-party. Why is this issue important to the plaintiffs? Because the jury handed down an $8,543,530 verdict but attributed 100% fault to the non-party.
This case concerned a wreck between a passenger bus and a concrete truck. The concrete truck took a left turn and struck the bus causing it to collide with a light pole and eject the plaintiff and resulting in a traumatic brain injury to the plaintiff. The plaintiffs settled with the concrete truck defendant before trial and then proceeded to trial against several other defendants on various theories of liability concerning the passenger bus.
In this appeal, the Court of Appeals first explained that Tennessee has a system of modified comparative fault, adopted by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1992 in the landmark case of McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d 52,56 (Tenn. 1992). Under this system, fault is apportioned among all parties in proportion to their degree of culpability, and a defendant is only liable for the percentage of damages that his or her own negligence caused. In McIntyre, the court also adopted the non-party defense, allowing juries to apportion fault to non-parties with culpability. McIntyre, 833 S.W.2d at 58.
As predicted, New England Compounding Pharamcy, Inc., the owner of the New England Compounding Center (NECC), filed for bankruptcy last week. NECC is the company that provided contaminated steriods that killed and hurt hundreds of people, including many in Tennessee and Kentucky.
Click the link to view NECC’s bankruptcy filing.

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