Case Name: Charles A. CASE v. METAIRIE FORD et al.
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1973-01-15
Citations: 272 So. 2d 49
Docket Number: No. 5197
Parties: Charles A. CASE v. METAIRIE FORD et al.
Judges: Before REDMANN, LEMMON and GULOTTA, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 272
Pages: 49–53

Head Matter:
Charles A. CASE v. METAIRIE FORD et al.
No. 5197.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.
Jan. 15, 1973.
Rehearing Denied Feb. 6, 1973.
Writ Refused April 12, 1973.
Clarence O. Dupuy, New Orleans, for plaintiff-appellant.
Gerald R. Cooper, Normann & Nor-mann, New Orleans, for defendant, third-party defendant, third-party plaintiff-ap-pellee.
Paul B. Deal, Lemle, Kelleher, Kohlmeyer, Matthews & Schumacher, New Orleans, for defendants, third-party plaintiffs, third-party defendants-appellants.
Before REDMANN, LEMMON and GULOTTA, JJ.

Opinion:
REDMANN, Judge.
Plaintiff sued the Ford Motor Company and its insurer and a local Ford dealer for personal injury occurring as plaintiff's three-month-old Ford automobile started from a stopped position, and the right front seat in which he was seated tilted backwards. Ford and its insurer third-partied the dealer and it third-partied them.
Judgment cast only Ford and its insurer for $10,000, and rejected their third-party demand. They appealed. (Plaintiff also appealed. A question of the timeliness of his appeal bond need not be considered since, as a result of our necessary review and decision of the first appeal, we conclude that question is moot.)
The car seat is bolted to a movable track (allowing forward or backward adjustment of the seat) by four bolts, one in each corner. The two front bolts were, after the incident, found on the floor of the car, unbroken and showing no sign of wear, stripping or other damage. This seat had never rattled nor given any other indication of looseness; the driver's seat had suggested looseness (by what circumstances was not shown) and was repaired by the dealer a month prior to this occurrence during a 6,000-mile checkup. That the movable track was neither stripped nor broken apart is fairly proved by the uncontradict-ed evidence that it has since served in the car (with replacement bolts) without further incident.
Defendants' experts opined that the bolts could not have either been loosely installed or simply worked themselves loose without causing the seat to rock and to rattle considerably and without the bolts showing wear. They also testified their inspection shortly after the occurrence showed the lock washers to have bright metal appearing through the dull gray finish, and the movable tracks to have marked cutting into their surface, from which circumstances they opined that the bolts had originally been tightened firmly to the track.
Plaintiff's expert mechanic opined the bolts worked themselves loose. However, he also testified the lock washer "would hold it from loosing themselves up. The Court: If they were on. A: That's right, But, maybe in production, you know how fast we live in our country, everything is fast. Anything could happen, that's right. I don't know."
Yet plaintiff's photograph shows the lock washers on the bolts on the car floor the day after the accident, and defendants' experts testified the bolts were so constructed and the lock washers so made that they could not come off (because their inside diameter was smaller than the bolt thread diameter).
A defense photographer testified he had to put the bolts into a vise and use vise-grip pliers to twist the washers off.
Plaintiff's expert testified that plaintiff's pictures did not show lock washers on the bolts; that what was suggested to be a lock washer was (part of) the head of the bolt. He finally suggested, at the court's prompting, that it could be a flat (non-locking) washer. He identified, in plaintiff's photograph of the car floor, some narrow, flat, irregularly oblong and apparently solid (i. e., without a hole through which the large bolt could pass) object as the lock washer.
We conclude the testimony of defendant's experts, plaintiff's photograph and defendant's photographer's testimony preponderate and establish that the lock washers were on the bolts at the time of the occurrence. Therefore plaintiff's expert's opinion was at least in part based on a false factual basis.
Accordingly, in our view plaintiff has shown only that the incident occurred because the two bolts were not in place. Defense experts testified factually the bolt washers and tracks showed the evidence of having been properly tightened, and all experts agreed that properly tightened bolts could not have worked themselves loose. Plaintiff's expert did not testify that the washers and tracks did not show indication of proper tightening: he at best concluded that, since the bolts were out, they must not have been properly installed. The other evidence ignored, that conclusion is one possibility. Yet another possibility exists, namely that someone (perhaps a thief or vandal) unscrewed the bolts. (Plaintiff's testimony of keeping the car generally locked does not necessarily exclude this possibility.) And in view of all the expert evidence and of plaintiff's testimony that the seat never previously rattled, rocked or showed any other sign of looseness, the only explanation advanced consistent with the facts is that the bolts were unscrewed.
If, as plaintiff argues, this is a case where plaintiff's evidence made a prima facie case and shifted to defendants the burden of going forward with the evidence, defendants have met that burden.
The judgment in plaintiff's favor is reversed and his suit dismissed at his cost; and in all other respects the judgment appealed from is affirmed.
LEMMON, J., concurs with written reasons.
GULOTTA, J., dissents with written reasons.
. By a ruling we need not review, the bolts themselves were refused admission into evidence because of the photographer's having thus somewhat altered them shortly before trial.