Opinion ID: 773511
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Instruction on Spartanics' Duty to Warn

Text: 21 At trial, Burke objected to the district court's instruction to the jury that, if it found that [1] Burke already knew of the danger or dangers associated with the Spartanics metal shearing machine, or [2] that the dangers associated with the machine were obvious, and generally known and recognized, you will find that the defendant Spartanics had no duty to warn Mr. Burke of the dangers associated with the metal shearing machine. Based on Burke's own requested instruction, his statements to the trial judge, and his briefing on appeal, we discern two discrete arguments put forward by appellant: first, that the court below erred in instructing the jury that Spartanics had no duty to warn of risks that were obvious; second, that the court erred in instructing the jury that Spartanics had no duty to warn of risks about which Burke himself was aware. For both propositions appellant relies on our recent decision in Liriano v. Hobart Corp., 170 F.3d 264, 269 (2d Cir. 1999) (Liriano III), in which we applied New York's failure-to-warn law as set forth by the New York Court of Appeals' in Liriano v. Hobart Corp., 700 N.E.2d 303, 308 (N.Y. 1998) (Liriano II), answering questions certified by Liriano v. Hobart Corp., 132 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 1998) (Liriano I). 22 The first of these arguments is plainly wrong. It is a well- established principle of New York law that a limited class of hazards need not be warned of as a matter of law because they are patently dangerous or pose open and obvious risks. Liriano II, 700 N.E.2d 303, 308; accord, e.g., Bazerman v. Gardall Safe Corp., 609 N.Y.S.2d 610, 611 (App. Div., 1st Dep't 1994). This is just another way of saying that a reasonable person would not warn of obvious dangers, i.e. those harms that most all people know about. As a result, as to these risks, it cannot be negligent to fail to warn. 23 Not only did the New York Court of Appeals in Liriano II reaffirm the obviousness exception to a manufacturer's duty to warn, see Lauber v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 709 N.Y.S.2d 325, 326 (App. Div., 4th Dep't 2000); Brady v. Dunlop Tire Corp., 711 N.Y.S.2d 633, 634-35 (App. Div., 3d Dep't 2000), but nothing in our opinion in Liriano III suggests the contrary. The question in Liriano III was simply obviousness of what? The Liriano cases involved an employee who injured his hand in the course of using a meat grinder that was manufactured with a safety guard but from which the guard had been removed. In Liriano III we upheld the verdict for the plaintiff because the jury could have found that, absent an appropriate warning, it was not obvious (a) that it is feasible to reduce the risk with safety guards, (b) that such guards are made available with the grinders, and (c) that the grinders should be used only with the guards. Liriano III, 170 F.3d at 271. Because the existence of a safer method of using the grinder was not obvious, a jury could have found that a duty to warn, i.e. to inform the plaintiff that the machine should not be used in the absence of that safer method, was violated. Accordingly, it was unnecessary in Liriano III to decide whether it was obvious that the method plaintiff actually used was dangerous. See id. 24 At oral argument, Burke made clear that his contention is that Spartanics should have placed a warning, at the rear approach to the machine, about the dangers of placing one's hand in the cutting plane. His argument was expressly not that Spartanics should have warned that the (perhaps obvious) dangers associated with access to the machine from the back could be obviated by use of the original conveyor system, and that the machine should not be used without that conveyor system. Nor was this latter argument, an analogue to that upheld in Liriano III, put forward below. Accordingly, Liriano III is of no benefit to plaintiff, and the trial court was correct in charging the jury that there was no duty to warn if the dangers associated with the machine were obvious, and generally known and recognized. 25 Burke's second argument - that his own knowledge of the machine's dangerousness did not negate Spartanics' duty to warn - is essentially correct, but for reasons that do not ultimately undermine our confidence in the jury verdict. The problem with the court's instruction lies in its conflation of two separate issues: (1) whether the manufacturer, considering the reasonably foreseeable uses to which its product might be put, had a duty to warn potential users in general about the machine's dangers; and (2) whether, in retrospect, giving a warning would have made any difference to this particular plaintiff. The first question concerns the open and obvious risks exception, which goes to the manufacturer's duty. The second question, in contrast, goes to the analytically distinct issue of whether a putative breach of that duty was a cause of this plaintiff's injury. 26 Whether a given risk is obvious depends in large part on what the mass of users knows and understands. Thus, [a] manufacturer has a duty to warn against latent dangers resulting from foreseeable uses of its product of which it knew or should have known. Liriano II, 700 N.E.2d at 305 (emphasis added). Accordingly, courts treat obvious danger as `a condition that would ordinarily be seen and the danger of which would ordinarily be appreciated by those who would be expected to use the product.' Id. at 308 (quoting Prosser and Keeton, Torts § 96, at 686- 87 (5th ed. 1984)) (emphasis added). 27 The class of reasonably foreseeable users will, of course, encompass a spectrum of persons with widely varying abilities and experience bearing on their perception of the hazards at hand. Some may be practiced and skilled operators, while others may be novices, or may use the machine in adverse conditions that, though atypical, are still foreseeable. See id. at 305 (A manufacturer also has a duty to warn of the danger of unintended uses of a product provided these uses are reasonably foreseeable.); id. at 307 (duty to warn of dangers arising from foreseeable alterations to a product). 28 So long as the relevant risks are not obvious to some members of the class of foreseeable users, a reasonable manufacturer might well be expected to warn. And, as a result, a duty to warn will generally be said to exist. 3 See id. at 308 (the purpose of the open and obvious exception is to identify dangers of which a user might not otherwise be aware, thereby enabling consumers to adjust their behavior). This is so, moreover, notwithstanding the fact that there may also be foreseeable users for whom the warning is superfluous. It is always possible that a particular plaintiff has a greater awareness of the risks in question than do other users who are or ought to be foreseeable to the manufacturer, and it is, therefore, error to instruct the jury, as was done here, that there is no duty to warn simply because the particular plaintiff was cognizant of the relevant hazards. 4 29 But of course a defendant's liability will not arise from a breach of duty alone. Instead, the plaintiff must show, in addition, that the failure to warn [was] a substantial cause of the events which produced the injury. Billsborrow v. Dow Chem., 579 N.Y.S.2d 728, 733 (App. Div., 2d Dep't 1992). And where the injured party was fully aware of the hazard through general knowledge, observation or common sense, or participated in the removal of the safety device whose purpose is obvious, lack of a warning about that danger may well obviate the failure to warn as a legal cause of an injury resulting from that danger. Liriano II, 700 N.E.2d at 308; accord Smith v. Stark, 490 N.E.2d 841, 842 (N.Y. 1986). Thus, it may well be the case that a given risk is not obvious, in the sense of precluding any duty to warn, but that nevertheless, because the risk was well understood by the plaintiff, a warning would have made no difference. See Brady, 711 N.Y.S.2d at 634-36 (distinguishing issue of whether risk was open and obvious from issue of whether plaintiff had actual knowledge of the hazard). And the failure to warn was therefore not a cause of the harm. 30 There are sufficient similarities between the issues of (a) whether a hazard was sufficiently obvious to all foreseeable users to preclude any duty to warn, and (b) whether the danger was sufficiently well known to the plaintiff to preclude a showing of causation, that confusion between them is not surprising. This is especially so because the concrete experiences of individual plaintiffs understandably, and properly, provide an important reference point in assessing the range of knowledge among reasonably foreseeable users. See Liriano III, 170 F.3d at 268-69. Nonetheless, recognizing the difference between these questions is important. 31 If the distinction is not observed, manufacturers' duties may be diluted by cases in which the particular plaintiff happens to have had a greater appreciation of the risks than would the mass of other foreseeable users. Where such greater individual awareness of the risk means that a warning would not have prevented the injury, failure to distinguish duty from cause may lead to an (erroneous) finding of no duty to warn notwithstanding the fact that foreseeable users would in fact be significantly aided by a warning. And, as a result of such a holding, subsequent plaintiffs injured by the same instrumentality would be faced with a prior ruling establishing the absence of any duty to warn, even though their appreciation of the risk might well be low enough to establish causation. Conversely, the distinction protects manufacturers against suits by plaintiffs who, though sufficiently ignorant that a warning would have enabled them to avoid an accident, were so unforeseeable that the manufacturer had no duty to provide them with notice of what to foreseeable users would be obvious. Cf. Liriano II, 700 N.E.2d at 308 (noting that requiring warnings against obvious dangers would tend to trivialize[] and undermine[] the entire purpose of the rule [by] drowning out cautions against latent dangers). Harmless Error 32 The same fact - Burke's awareness of the risk of placing his hand in the cutting plane while removing metal from the ramp - that appellant urges (correctly) should not have been permitted to negate Spartanics' duty to warn does, however, fully negate any causal connection between the absence of a rear warning and his injuries. See, e.g., Smith, 490 N.E.2d at 842 (finding no causation because plaintiff must have known based on his general knowledge of pools, his observations prior to the accident, and plain common sense . . . that, if he dove into the pool, the area into which he dove contained shallow water); McMurry v. Inmont Corp., 694 N.Y.S.2d 157, 158-59 (App. Div., 2d Dep't 1999) (holding that, given plaintiff's experience and training, a warning would not have added anything to the appreciation of this hazard). The erroneous instruction was therefore harmless. See Renz v. Grey Adver., Inc., 135 F.3d 217, 224 (2d Cir. 1997) (holding that an erroneous charge was harmless because the evidence [against plaintiff] is so strong that a correct charge on the plaintiff's standard of proof . . . would not have made a difference to the verdict). 33 In reaching this conclusion, we are cognizant that the essence of Burke's claim is that a warning on the rear of the machine would have reminded him of the danger of placing his hand near the cutting mechanism, not simply that a warning would have informed him of that danger. Warnings, of course, can serve to bring dangerous conditions to a user's attention, not merely to explain that they are dangerous. Thus, the mere fact that Burke already knew that it was dangerous to put his hand in the cutting plane (in the sense that, had he been asked whether it was dangerous, he would have answered that it was and would have understood why), is compatible with the notion that, had he seen a warning at the time he was choosing to put his hand there, such a warning might have prompted him to exercise greater care (whether by finding another source of leverage or by making sure that O'Neill knew not to engage the blade). Cf. Liriano II, 700 N.E.2d at 308 (noting that ultimate measure of need for warnings is whether they aid or hinder customers in adjusting their behavior to avoid accidents). 34 Nonetheless, on the facts presented here, we have no doubt that the lack of a warning on the rear of the machine was not a cause-in-fact of the accident. This is not a case in which a usually careful employee uncharacteristically forgot to take a safety precaution, nor one in which a plaintiff, though fully apprised of a machine's dangers, simply forgot to take care in the course of using the machine for the first time, or after a long hiatus. In such circumstances, it might be the case that a reminder could avert an accident. 5 35 Here, instead, the method by which plaintiff removed cut metal from the ramp (i.e., by bracing himself with one hand on the machine's cutting surface) was the routine manner in which this task was carried out at Metal Etching. Indeed, plaintiff testified that he had been trained to act in this way, that his supervisor acted in this way, and that he had never been instructed by his employer to clear out the machine in any other manner. Burke also testified that putting his hand near the blade caused [him] concern but that he never complained because he did not want to cause trouble, because it was the only way to accomplish the task, and because it was understood that, precisely to mitigate the maneuver's well-known dangers, one did not operate the machine while someone else was behind it retrieving materials. 36 If we assume - as we must - that the jury, based on the incorrect instruction, found that these facts concerning Burke's awareness of the machine's dangers precluded any duty on defendant to provide a rear warning, then we must also say, as a matter of law, that the same jury, properly instructed, would have found that Burke was sufficiently aware of the danger to preclude the required causal connection between the absence of a warning and the accident in question. In circumstances such as these, an erroneous instruction is harmless. See United States. v. Malpeso, 115 F.3d 155, 165-67 (2d Cir. 1997) (upholding conviction where, assuming that the jury was erroneously instructed that certain facts would support liability on one theory, the same facts would impose liability on another theory that also was before the jury).