Opinion ID: 2831507
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Evidence of the Relevant Risk

Text: Genie contends, and the Court agrees, that there is no evidence in this record that the risk of this kind of misuse was foreseeable and likely despite the warning and obvious dangers. Genie 12 acknowledges that the record contains three reports regarding similar accidents that occurred when those operators, like the operators in this case, raised the leveling jacks while the platform was elevated and occupied.5 The jury heard testimony and received accident reports about those similar accidents. But Genie contends that all of those accidents involved less serious injuries because the platform was much lower when the lifts tipped over. And more importantly, Genie asserts that the evidence of those three accidents did not indicate a “likelihood” of such accidents because the evidence also established that Genie has sold “hundreds of thousands” of these lifts worldwide, and they have been used without incident “literally ‘millions’ of times.” Genie contends that the evidence thus conclusively establishes that the relevant risk is “very slight.” The Court agrees with Genie, emphasizing that the evidence in this record of similar accidents and misuses did not indicate that the platform was “fully elevated” when the users tried to move the lift in those cases, and concluding that the evidence thus establishes only that “the chance that anyone would attempt to [move the lift] with the platform fully elevated is only one in millions.” Ante at ___. This conclusion ignores both our precedent regarding the role of evidence of similar accidents and, more importantly, the evidence of how and why the accident at issue here actually occurred. With regard to the role of evidence of similar accidents, we acknowledged in Hernandez that it is difficult to apply the risk-utility analysis when the evidence suggests that it is unlikely that a product will cause any accidental harm, but when it does the harm will likely be severe. 2 S.W.3d at 261. In that case, we agreed that the evidence established that although “children will 5 Genie’s director of product safety also acknowledged that he had reports of “eight or nine or ten instances of people not doing it right.” Whether there was evidence of thirteen instances of similar misuse or only three, however, is not significant to my conclusion. 13 almost certainly obtain access to lighters, . . . this will not happen often in comparison with the number of lighters sold, but . . . when it does happen the harm caused can be extreme.” Id. at 260. In light of this, the manufacturer urged us not to apply the risk-utility analysis and instead determine the product’s dangerousness based solely on whether the product was more dangerous that ordinary consumers would expect it to be. Id. at 261. The manufacturer noted that the Legislature has adopted just that approach for cases involving firearms and ammunition, 6 and urged us to judicially adopt the same approach for cigarette lighters, as courts in other jurisdictions had done. Id. at 261–62. We refused to do so, explaining that “we are reluctant to carve out exceptions to the risk-utility test that we have employed for years and that has been adopted by the Restatement, especially when consumer expectation is a factor to be considered in applying the risk-utility test and may in some cases outweigh all other considerations.” Id. at 262 (emphasis omitted). Importantly, the “difficulties” that led the Legislature to reject the risk-utility analysis in favor of the consumer-expectations test for firearms, like the “difficulties” that the manufacturer asserted in Hernandez, arose from the fact that, with both guns and cigarette lighters, it is highly unlikely that the product will cause any accidental harm, but when it does the harm is likely to be 6 For public policy reasons, the Legislature has declared that the risk-utility analysis does not apply to a defective design claim against a manufacturer or seller of firearms or ammunition. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE § 82.006(b) (“The claimant may not prove the existence of the defective design by a comparison or weighing of the benefits of the firearm or ammunition against the risk of personal injury, property damage, or death posed by its potential to cause such injury, damage, or death when discharged.”). Instead, a claimant may prove that a firearm was defectively designed only by proving that the gun, as designed, did not function as an ordinary consumer of firearms would have reasonably expected. Id. § 82.006(a)(1) (claimant must prove that “the actual design of the firearm or ammunition was defective, causing the firearm or ammunition not to function in a manner reasonably expected by an ordinary consumer of firearms or ammunition”). We thus noted in Hernandez that “[d]ifficulties in applying the riskutility test have prompted the Legislature to prescribe a consumer-expectation test for firearms and ammunition.” 2 S.W.3d at 261. 14 severe. Id. at 261 (explaining the manufacturer’s argument that “the risk-utility analysis is ill-suited for cases like this when the utility of a product design is largely satisfaction of consumer preference and the risk of harm, while improbable relative to the number of products sold, is often calamitous”). Although we “recognize[d] that such circumstances make the use of the risk-utility test difficult,” id., we refused to reject the risk-utility analysis and concluded instead that “[e]ach of these considerations is relevant in assessing the risk,” id. at 260. We reached the same conclusion in Martinez, in which we acknowledged that “there ha[d] been few reported [similar] accidents involving tires with this particular warning label.” Martinez, 977 S.W.2d at 337. We held that the relatively small number of similar accidents was “relevant, and perhaps would persuade many juries,” but we stated that “we cannot say that it conclusively establishes that the tire is reasonably safe when weighed against the other evidence.” Id. Under Hernandez and Martinez, the Court’s matter-of-law conclusion here that the lift is not unreasonably dangerous because the jury heard evidence of only a few similar accidents is simply wrong. Although the number of similar accidents that the jury heard about was small compared to the “millions” of uneventful uses of the lift worldwide, we have held that such evidence does not conclusively establish that the relevant risk is “very slight.” In addition, the Court’s reliance on the relatively small number of similar accidents ignores the evidence that the jury heard about how and why this accident occurred. Here, as in Martinez and Hernandez, the record contains other evidence7 of the circumstances surrounding the accident, which would permit a reasonable juror to conclude that the relevant risk was high even if the 7 The Court is simply incorrect when it says I conclude “a single accident is enough to show likelihood.” Ante at ___. To the contrary, I conclude that the evidence I detail here is enough to show likelihood, or at least enough for a reasonable juror to find a likelihood sufficient to conclude that the risk outweighs the utility. 15 number of actual accidents was relatively low. John Adams, the church’s employee in charge of audio and HVAC, testified that he and the church’s other maintenance staff used the lift “just about every week,” and he asked someone to raise the jacks and move the lift with him in it “[e]very time” he used it. The church’s IT director, Clifton Ray Poe, testified that he also used the lift, and he agreed that it was “fairly common to just loosen the feet and slide it over a little bit” with someone in it. Adams claimed that he had read the entire user’s manual, and admitted that he had seen the warning on the lift, that his supervisor at his prior job had told him not to move the lift “if any of the outriggers are raised,” and that this warning was “fairly common sense.” Despite these instructions, warnings, and “common sense” knowledge, however, Adams admitted that he raised the leveling jacks and moved the lift “every time” he used it. But in his case, he explained, the lift was usually extended only about 10 or 12 feet up, at a level where he “felt comfortable jumping” if necessary. In this case, according to Adams, he moved the lift with Logan Matak in it at least twice before the accident occurred. The first time, Matak “came all the way down” before Adams moved the lift, and the second time he came down to “10 or 12 feet.” Adams raised the leveling jacks only “[m]aybe an inch to two,” safely moved the lift, and re-set the jacks, and Matak then raised the lift back up to 35–40 feet. About thirty minutes later, Matak asked Adams and Jimmy Boggan, Matak’s supervisor, to move him again. According to Adams, he then walked over to the lift and saw that Boggan was already raising a leveling jack, so he began to do the same. He claimed he “didn’t look to see if [the lift] was raised,” did not know whether Matak was still “30 feet up or 12 feet up,” and just “assumed 16 [that Matak] was happy” being moved where he was. He explained that he did not even think about how high Matak was at the time because he was in a hurry and was just helping Matak while trying to do his own job: “When you’re focused on getting your other job done and the other things you got coming behind that and you’re trying to move at a rapid pace and the man said that he was ready to move, I never thought to look up and look for him.” Adams speculated that, if he had looked up and noticed how high Matak was, it would have caused him concern about trying to move the lift, and he would have asked if Matak was “sure” he wanted to be moved. Unfortunately, Adams did not look up. Instead, he looked down and saw that Boggan was already raising the leveling jacks on one side of the lift, so he knelt down and raised the other two jacks just off the floor, “[m]aybe half to an inch.” As soon as he began to straighten back up, he heard Matak say “I’m leaning,” and only then did he realize then that the lift was too high. He grabbed the lift to keep it from falling, but by then there was nothing he could do and “it kept coming,” so he backed out of the way as Matak fell to his death. Boggan also testified and confirmed that Adams said that they “push [a church employee] around in that [lift] all the time.” Like Adams, Boggan claimed that, just before the fall, he raised the leveling jacks only enough to take “the pressure off it,” enough to clear the carpet. Boggan testified that Adams was the one who suggested moving the lift with Matak in it, to save time, and that he and Matak agreed to “try it,” but did so “on the total assumption that what [Adams] says is true, that the church uses that thing and moves it around all the time.” Consistent with the testimony of Adams, Poe, and Boggan, the Matak’s expert, Ken Zimmer, testified that “in the industry . . . it was widespread that people used these [lifts] without outriggers” in place. 17 Adams also testified that, although he purchased the lift involved in this accident and used it regularly, he received no formal training on its operation. Instead, his only “training” was when the maintenance staff at the church where he had previously worked showed him how the lift operates. Brent Sparks, the church’s worship minister who had also used the lift, admitted that he did so even though he had never read the manual and was not familiar with its warning (and even though he considers himself to be “a careful person”). Boggan, who had worked as an electrician for Gulf Coast for eleven years, testified that he had never received any formal training on how to use “one of these lifts,” had never read the manual for “this lift or any other lift like this,” and did not read any of the warnings. Consistent with these admissions, Zimmer, the Matak’s expert, explained that dealers regularly rent these lifts to non-professionals. In his opinion, “[m]anufacturers know that these machines are gonna be abused, misused, [the users] aren’t gonna be trained properly. . . . [T]hey don’t read the manual . . . . [They] rent the machine . . . and take it home and use it.” Indeed, the portable, lightweight, inexpensive qualities that increase the lift’s utility could make it more likely that untrained users will operate it.8 This testimony, combined with the evidence of at least three similar accidents involving the same lift design, would permit a reasonable juror to conclude, or at least draw the reasonable inference, that: 8 Addressing the risks of cigarette lighters in Hernandez, we explained that “[t]he risk that adults, for whose use the products were intended, will allow children access to them, resulting in harm, must be balanced against the products’ utility to their intended users.” 2 S.W.3d at 259. “Whether adult users of lighters should be deprived of this choice of product design because of the risk that some children will obtain lighters that are not child-resistant and cause harm is the proper focus of the common-law risk-utility test.” Id. at 260. In the same way, the risk that Genie’s dealers and trained professionals will allow untrained non-professionals like Adams, Boggan, and Matak to operate the lift, resulting in harm, is a factor to be balanced against the lift’s utility to its intended users under the risk-utility test. Based on the testimony of the witnesses in this case, a reasonable juror could conclude that the risks of unintended uses and users outweighed the utility of the lift for intended uses and users. 18  Adams did not intentionally destabilize the lift knowing that it was “fully elevated,” but instead assumed that the platform was at a lower and less dangerous level;  Despite the warning and apparently obvious dangers, Adams believed it was safe to destabilize and move the lift, at least with the platform at a lower level, because he and others regularly did so without incident;  Despite the warning and apparently obvious dangers, this is a common assumption, particularly in light of how often untrained non-professionals use the lift, and as a result, the use and movement of the lift when it is destabilized is a regular or common occurrence;  Workers like Boggan and Matak, who do not use the lift very often, will follow the lead of workers like Adams, who do, and will try to move the lift when it is occupied despite the warning and apparently obvious dangers;  The lift is not safe when it is moved or destabilized, even when the platform is at a lower level, because a fall when the platform is at any level can cause serious injuries and death;  The fact that the lift can be, and commonly is, destabilized and moved at a lower level without incident makes the lift even more dangerous because it gives users a false sense that it is safe to move the lift with the platform at a lower level, which can lead to the kinds of assumptions and accidents that occurred here;  Despite the warning and apparently obvious dangers, it is foreseeable and likely that operators are going to destabilize and move the lift when the platform is extended and occupied; and  It is therefore likely that some users of this product will sustain serious injuries and deaths due to the misuse of the lift, despite the warning and apparent obvious dangers. Based on this evidence, I conclude that reasonable jurors could have different views regarding “the user’s anticipated awareness of the dangers inherent in the product,” the “avoidability” of those dangers “because of general public knowledge of the obvious condition of the product, or of the existence of suitable warnings or instructions,” the “expectations of the ordinary consumer,” and thus the “gravity and likelihood of injury” from the product’s use. Timpte, 286 S.W.3d at 311 (quoting Grinnell, 951 S.W.2d at 432). I would thus hold that the record 19 contains at least some evidence on which a reasonable juror could conclude that the relevant risk of the Genie lift outweighs its utility.