Opinion ID: 218972
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Inadequate Warnings Claim

Text: Resolute contends that the warnings on the heater and the instructions in its user's manual were inadequate to inform the user of the proper means of disconnecting power to the unit before repair. In granting summary judgment to Webasto on this claim, the district court first concluded that the instructions were irrelevant because Albrecht had never read them. The parties agree that if Albrecht read the instructions, he read them at a Webasto training session conducted by Sure Marine, a heater supply company. The district court found, however, that Webasto had establish[ed] as a fact beyond dispute that Albrecht could not have attended a Webasto training prior to the fire aboard the boat, thereby proving Albrecht had not reviewed the user's manual and instructions at the time of the repair. It also reasoned that [e]ven assuming arguendo that Albrecht had read the Webasto manual and the adequacy of its warnings was in issue, Resolute presented insufficient evidence of the instructions' inadequacy to raise a fact question for trial. We reject the first of the district court's reasons for granting summary judgment, but conclude its alternative holding was proper.
The district court erred in concluding that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether Albrecht attended a Webasto training before the fire. In his declaration, Albrecht insisted that he was certain he attended a class training him on the Webasto heater system prior to the fire aboard the CHUG[] in October 2006. In support, Resolute submitted illegible timesheets purporting to demonstrate Albrecht attended a training session on September 26, 2006, six days before the fire on October 2. Webasto countered with a declaration from the president of Sure Marine, stating that Sure Marine's only 2006 Webasto training took place on October 18, 2006, well after the fire. The Sure Marine declaration was accompanied by a class roster showing that Albrecht was at an October 18 training class, although it did not prove that no additional classes were held earlier in the year. Neither party's evidence established beyond the declarants' conflicting assertions whether Albrecht attended a training before the fire. The district court chose to credit the Sure Marine declaration, however, dismissing Albrecht's contrary declaration as unsubstantiated. In accepting one account over the other, the court improperly resolved an evidentiary conflict at the summary judgment stage. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986) (explaining that [c]redibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are inappropriate at the summary judgment stage).
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.