Opinion ID: 3219234
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: HWM system design and operation

Text: HWM systems are used to extract coal in surface-mining operations. Operating much like a train, the system includes a continuous extraction device (called a “miner”) made up of a string of conveyor cars that are kept in place by guide rails, with the cars collecting the coal as it is dislodged from the seam. Attached to the miner’s first car is a large “cutter head” that penetrates the coal seam. As the cutter head advances further into the seam, more conveyor cars are added to the miner. The continuous miner is deployed from a launch platform. Hydraulic car pushers, known as “pusher jacks,” are installed on the launch platform and push additional cars into the mining hole as the miner advances. After all the cars are filled with coal from the coal seam, mine workers reverse the conveyor function and remove each car, one by one, from the launch platform to empty its contents. Joy manufactured the HWM system in question in the early 1990s. The system was leased and sold to various operators over the course of several years. In 1999, it was sold for scrap to Pittston, another mining operator. The system was later acquired by Appalachian Fuels, which broke down the system and moved it to several different mining locations. At the time that the HWM system was originally sold by Joy, its launch platform included two inner guide rails to align the continuous miner as it entered the mine. Of particular importance to the present case is that the original HWM system did not include the outer guide rails that contributed to the creation of a “pinch point” on the launch platform. These outer guide rails were added later by Teddy Triplett, then an employee of Appalachian Fuels, who would subsequently become Smith’s foreman at the Harlan County mine. The parties do not dispute that Triplett was the one who added these outer guide rails, presumably because he needed to maintain alignment between the HWM system and a continuous miner larger than the one that Joy manufactured. Joy maintains that the outer guide rails were never part of its original design because they were unnecessary to the functioning of Nos. 14-6406/6461 Smith, et al. v. Joy Technologies, Inc. Page 4 its own continuous miner, and that it had no knowledge that the HWM system had been modified to include outer guide rails. Between 2000 and 2007, Triplett and his crew moved the HWM system to several different locations across Illinois and Kentucky. When Triplett became the foreman at the Harlan County mine, he asked Smith to help him relocate the HWM system, which was then in Illinois. Triplett and Smith disassembled the HWM system, transported it to Kentucky, and reassembled it for use at the Harlan County mine.