Opinion ID: 218972
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Adequacy of Warnings and Instructions

Text: We nonetheless hold that the district court properly granted summary judgment to Webasto because Resolute failed to establish a genuine issue that the heater's warnings and instructions were inadequate. Resolute contends the warnings and instructions improperly left to the repair technician, Albrecht, the method of disconnecting power to the burner unit. We disagree. A product is defective because of inadequate instructions or warnings when the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product could have been reduced or avoided by the provision of reasonable instructions or warnings ... and the omission of the instructions or warnings renders the product not reasonably safe. Restatement § 2(c). In general, however, a product seller is not subject to liability for failing to warn or instruct regarding risks and risk-avoidance measures that should be obvious to, or generally known by, foreseeable product users. Id. § 2 cmt. j. In this case, the risk that failure to disconnect the power could cause a fire should have been obvious to Albrecht, an experienced technician who undertook to repair a flame-emitting burner unit in the confined space of a boat where fire is a generally known risk. Indeed, Albrecht himself admitted in his deposition that kill the power is an elementary rule for working on a piece of equipment powered by electricity. Moreover, a warning on the outside of the burner unit advised the user to [d]isconnect the current before opening, confirming what Albrecht acknowledged was a basic precautionary principle. Thus, even if Webasto was required to inform Albrecht he needed to kill the power before beginning the repair, Webasto provided such a warning. Resolute nonetheless argues that Webasto failed to advise Albrecht of the proper mechanism for disconnecting the power. But if Albrecht, an experienced technician, was unsure how to go about disconnecting the power, he could have looked to the heater's repair manual, which included the following instruction: 6.3 Removing the burner unit Replacement of certain components in the combustion unit is made easier if the burner unit is first removed and placed on a bench. 1. Remove the cover on the thermostats, and pull out the connection for the overheat fuse[ ], control thermostat [ ] and temperature limiter [ ], unscrew the clamp [ ] and lift up the connectors. 2. Remove block connectors A and B from the control unit and disconnect the fuel lines from the heater connection pipes. Plug the pipes. 3. Loosen two eye bolt nuts [ ], swing out, remove the hinge pin[ ] and lift off the burner unit. Removal of the block connectors from the control unit, as directed in paragraph 2, disconnects power to the unit. Thus, read together with the warning on the outside of the burner unit, the manual advised Albrecht to disconnect the power before removing the burner unit, and provided for disconnection of the power, through removal of the block connectors, in the process of removing the burner unit. Resolute argues that its expert, Paul Way, raised a triable issue as to the instructions' adequacy. Way read instruction 6.3 as applying only when the burner unit was removed from the boat entirely, and opined that the instructions should have directed the user to disconnect the power cord from the unit ... in all cases, not just when the burner unit was removed from the boat. Even were we to assume Way's restrictive interpretation of instruction 6.3 was reasonable, however, it does not negate the fact that the instruction showed Albrecht how to be sure the power source was disconnected, by removing the block connectors. Way also testified that the later version of the instruction repair manual [instruction 6.3] ... added the statement that, with a big bold warning, `this is a dangerous situation,' suggesting that, to avoid an unsafe condition, a similar safety warning should have been included in the earlier version of the manual that was available to Albrecht. It is true that instruction 6.3 initially was framed as a way to replace burner unit components more easily, not as an explicit safety warning. But, as we have explained, the safety implications of disconnecting the power to the burner unit should have been obvious to Albrecht, especially when he left the connected burner unit lying close to and pointed toward the flammable cabin ceiling. In this context, the absence of a big bold warning was not unreasonable. See Restatement § 2 cmt. j. For these reasons, we affirm the summary judgment on Resolute's inadequate warnings claim.