Opinion ID: 2202592
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Misuse and Intervening Cause

Text: Soft Sheen also argues that if Payne's injury was caused by the product because it ran down her back, then the product was misused by the user, beautician Thrower. It alleges further, that negligence by Thrower in allowing the product to run down Payne's back was an intervening cause of the injury. Both the alleged misuse of the product and the alleged negligence of Thrower as an intervening and superseding cause, they contend, as a matter of law relieve the manufacturer of liability. In granting Soft Sheen's motion for a directed verdict, the trial court appeared to agree. For the following reasons, this was error. Product misuse is defined as use of a product in a manner that could not reasonably be foreseen by the defendant. Young v. Up-Right Scaffolds, Inc., 205 U.S.App.D.C. 264, 269, 637 F.2d 810, 815 (1980). Under both a negligence and a strict liability theory, the manufacturer has an obligation to anticipate reasonably foreseeable risks of harm arising in the course of proper use, and to warn of those risks, Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. Nutt, 407 A.2d 606, 610 n. 5 (D.C.1979), see Spruill v. Boyle-Midway, Inc., 308 F.2d 79, 84 (4th Cir.1962). Proper use includes the incidental and attendant consequences that accompany normal use, Helene Curtis Industries, Inc. v. Pruitt, 385 F.2d 841, 863 (5th Cir.1967), cert. denied, 391 U.S. 913, 88 S.Ct. 1806, 20 L.Ed.2d 652 (1968). Whether the injury here arose out of proper use of the product, out of use that could reasonably have been foreseen by defendant, or out of product misuse, is a jury question and should not have been decided as a matter of law by the trial court. Similarly, negligence by an intervening actor will not relieve the manufacturer of liability if the negligence could reasonably have been anticipated, under both negligence and strict liability theories of recovery, see Prosser, The Fall of the Citadel (Strict Liability to the Consumer), 50 MINN.L.REV. 791, 826-27 (1966). The manufacturer's action need not be the sole proximate cause of the injury: the manufacturer may still be held liable even though other causes proximately contributed to the injury. The question is whether the manufacturer's action was a proximate rather than a remote cause, and the test of proximate causation, again, is whether the result was reasonably foreseeable by the manufacturer. The existence of an intervening cause does not alter this test. See Dreibelbis v. Bennett, 162 Ind.App. 414, 319 N.E.2d 634, 638 (1974). Rather, where harmful consequences are brought about by intervening, independent forces (like the beautician's actions here) whose operation could have been foreseen, the chain of causation extending from the original act (if it is established as wrongful) is treated as a proximate cause. See Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp. v. Chapman, 180 Ind.App. 33, 388 N.E.2d 541, 555 (1979). Whether the manufacturer's action here was a proximate cause of the injury, i.e., whether it could reasonably have been foreseen that a chemical product with a propensity to burn that is applied to the hair as a lotion and then rinsed off might run down a patron's back and cause burns, is a question for the trier of fact, see id. [16]