Opinion ID: 3010856
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Clipper and Zeus Warnings

Text: The defendants also argue that Stephen had the type of adequate prior knowledge of the danger at hand that we found in Conti and Overpeck, supra, because he had read the warnings on the Clipper and Zeus cans prior to his fatal inhalation. As we have noted throughout, to fall within the scope of these cases, the record must demonstrate that Stephen was fully aware of the risk of bodily injury posed by butane inhalation. See Petree, supra . We deal first with the Zeus warning. As a matter of basic logic, the defendants' argument that Stephen read the Zeus label and therefore a more detailed warning would not have altered his course of conduct is not really a claim about causation at all, but is a claim about the ultimate issue in this case -- the adequacy of the existing Zeus warning under S 402A. 16 The initial determination of whether a warning is adequate in Pennsylvania is a matter of law. See Nowak v. Faberge USA, Inc., 32 F.3d 755, 757 (3d Cir. 1994), aff'g, 812 F. Supp. 492 (M.D. Pa. 1992); Davis, supra. Since, as we develop below, we discern a genuine issue of material fact regarding the adequacy of the Clipper warning, and since we believe that Clipper more adequately warns of the danger of using butane as an inhalant than does the Zeus can, we cannot conclude that Stephen's awareness of the Zeus label provides a reason for finding no causation. To the contrary, based on the present record, we have serious doubts that the Zeus warning sufficiently warns users of the potentially fatal consequences of butane inhalation, and we are not convinced of its adequacy under S 402A. More specifically, the DO NOT BREATHE SPRAY warning appears to give the user no notice of the serious nature of the danger posed by inhalation, intentional or otherwise, and no other language on the Zeus can does so. Yet, we similarly cannot find that such a directive is inadequate as a matter of law, and so we must leave the question for the jury.5 The present case does not, however, present the typical manner in which the adequacy of a warning becomes an issue. Normally, it is only the warning on the defendant's product -- here, Zeus brand butane -- whose adequacy courts are called upon to consider. The twist in this case is that the defendants and the district court have also made the adequacy of the Clipper warning a central issue by virtue of their proximate cause analysis. While the district court did not make a formal finding regarding the legal adequacy of the Clipper warning, it is apparent that its proximate cause analysis incorporated a belief that the Clipper warning would itself be adequate for S 402A purposes. The Clipper warning states, in small capital letters on the back panel of the can, Deliberately inhaling the contents _________________________________________________________________ 5. We make clear, however, that this conclusion presupposes that the district court will first engage in the necessary Azzarello analysis. See Nowak, 32 F.3d at 757 (citing Azzarello v. Black Bros. Co., 391 A.2d 1020, 1025-27 (Pa. 1978). 17 may be harmful or even fatal.6 The district court presumed that Stephen Pavlik had read this warning because Stephen had apparently inhaled Clipper brand butane at some point. The basis for this inference is the fact that several Clipper cans were found in Stephen's bureau drawer. Since we must draw all inferences in favor of plaintiff, the nonmoving party, it cannot be conclusively determined that Stephen inhaled Clipper butane from that fact alone. We agree, however, that it is reasonable to infer that Stephen had previously used the Clipper product in some manner or other. As we have explained, it is normally presumed, pursuant to comment j, that when an individual uses a product he or she has read and heeded any warning labels attached to that product. However, there is an exception to this presumption, implicit in cases that hold that the victim's actual failure to read a warning label does not necessarily bar recovery where the plaintiff is challenging the adequacy of the efforts of the manufacturer to communicate the dangers of the product to the buyer or user. Nowak, supra, 812 F. Supp. at 498; see also Baldino v. Castagna, 478 A.2d 807, 810 (Pa. 1984) (holding that drug manufacturer can breach duty of reasonable care by promoting product in such a way as to nullify printed warnings). That is, in cases where the alleged failure to warn is based on claims that a warning was given but was, for example, printed in small or unreadable type, the comment j presumption should not apply so as to compel a verdict for the defendant. This is because manufacturers cannot rely upon a presumption that the victim read a warning to shield themselves from liability for warnings that are inadequate precisely because they are not presented in a manner sufficient to attract the user's attention. See id. In the present case, the inadequacies of the Clipper warning alleged by plaintiff are both substantive (i.e. the warning does not adequately describe the danger posed) and communicative (i.e. the warning does not command the attention of the user). To demonstrate the problems with _________________________________________________________________ 6. The full text of the Clipper warning label is set forth in Part I, supra. 18 the Clipper warning, plaintiff primarily relies upon a report by E. Patrick McGuire, who is offered as a warnings expert. McGuire concludes that the Clipper warning is defective for the following reasons: 1) The inhalant danger is not listed on the front panel of the can, despite the fact that this is one of the primary biological hazards associated with the foreseeable use of this product; 2) The warning fails to specifically warn of the dangers of concentrating the product -- i.e. the prohibitions about breathing the contents of the can are misleading such that some readers will interpret this admonition to mean that a harmful dosage level is only reached if the entire can is inhaled; 3) The warning is set in conditional language, as opposed to stating that inhalation is likely to produce a fatal reaction. App. at 329. McGuire's opinion raises genuine issues of fact about the adequacy of the Clipper warning. On a substantive level, we can reasonably infer from McGuire's second and third critiques set forth above that even if Stephen Pavlik had read the Clipper warning, he would not have adequately been fully warned of the danger of bodily harm posed by butane inhalation. But even if the warning was substantively sound, that might not be enough, for the case law suggests that factors such as the placement and size of warning labels should also be considered. The opinion of the district court in Nowak, supra, surveyed the cases discussing these factors and found that: A manufacturer may be liable for failure to adequately warn where its warning is not prominent, and not calculated to attract the user's attention to the true nature of the danger due to its position, size, or coloring of its lettering. A warning may be found to be inadequate if its size or print is too small or inappropriately located on the product. The warning must be sufficient to catch the attention of persons who could be expected to use the product, to apprise 19 them of its dangers, and to advise them of the measures to take to avoid these dangers. Nowak, 812 F. Supp. at 497 (citations omitted). Although our opinion on appeal in Nowak affirmed the verdict and judgment of the district court, see Nowak, 32 F.3d at 759, we did not expressly adopt this portion of the district court's analysis. We do so here. Following Nowak, we could also conclude from McGuire's testimony that the Clipper warning was insufficient to catch the attention of Stephen Pavlik. As McGuire noted in his report, the Clipper warning is listed on the back panel of the can. It is printed in relatively small type, of the same font, color, and size as the instructions for use. Indeed, we note that against the bright yellow label background, the non-highlighted, black text of the warning, in which the admonitions about avoiding extreme temperatures, flammability, and keeping the product away from children, run directly into the warning about inhalation, may appear as a blur to the average user. Thus, drawing all inferences from the record in plaintiff's favor, we find that there is a genuine issue of material fact whether the Clipper warning was sufficient to catch Stephen Pavlik's attention and, by its terms, render an additional warning on the Zeus can unnecessary. We reach this conclusion regardless of whether we can apply comment j and presume that Stephen read the warning (in which case plaintiff 's expert testimony suggests that it is substantively deficient), or whether the exception discussed supra applies (in which case plaintiff has introduced sufficient evidence of communicative inadequacies to raise a question for the jury). The defendants have pointed to no specific evidence in the record that would render the Clipper warning sufficient to defeat causation. Instead, defendants argue in their briefs that Stephen Pavlik deliberately disregarded the Clipper and Zeus warnings in an attempt to misuse a product for the sole purpose of getting high. While a jury could certainly find the Clipper warning adequate and reach this conclusion, the defendants do not cite to evidence in the record demonstrating that a reasonable jury 20 could not find otherwise. Although we have thus far considered defendants' evidence of the three possible sources of Stephen's prior knowledge separately, we make clear that even considering the evidence of the Clipper warning in conjunction with the evidence of Mrs. Pavlik's alleged warnings and the (otherwise inadequate) Zeus warning, we are not persuaded that the defendants have met their burden of rebutting the comment j heeding presumption to the extent necessary to warrant summary judgment. Our conclusions here are not contrary to the results or rationales of Conti, Overpeck, or Powell, cases relied upon by defendants. Both Overpeck and Conti were concerned with reminder warnings -- that is, those cases dealt with the question whether an additional warning by the manufacturer was needed when there was undisputed proof that the victim was at one time aware of the specific danger posed by the product. In Conti, the plaintiff was injured as she was entering the passenger side of her husband's car. The husband had failed to disengage the clutch when he started the car and, as a result, it lurched backwards, injuring the plaintiff as she tried to enter. Plaintiff alleged that the defendant's failure to place a warning about disengaging the clutch in the car's interior caused the injury, and a jury agreed. After the district court denied Ford's post-trial motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, this Court reversed. We determined that the issue of causation should have been decided in the defendant's favor as a matter of law. Mr. Conti had testified that he knew that indriving a standard transmission you would have to depress the clutch, and testified that he had read the portion of the Owner's Manual to his car which stated [o]n manual transmission vehicles, depress the clutch pedal and place the gear shift lever in the neutral position. Conti, 743 F.2d at 198. In light of these admissions of actual awareness of the danger, which would rebut the comment j heeding presumption, we discerned no evidence in the record to suggest that Mr. Conti would have paid any greater attention to what he was doing when starting the car if additional warnings had been contained in the operator's manual or on a sticker in the car. See id. at 198-99. 21 In Overpeck, the plaintiff was injured when a tire mounting tool manufactured by the defendant became disengaged from a tire and struck him in the eye. The 780 plaintiff brought suit alleging, inter alia, that the manufacturer had failed to adequately warn him of this danger. The jury found for the plaintiff, but the district court granted a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict concluding that the record was devoid of evidence directly establishing that any warning would have caused the plaintiff to act differently. We affirmed. See Overpeck, 823 F.2d at 757. This conclusion was based on the fact that while Overpeck had apparently received no formal advance warning, he specifically testified that he was aware that the mounting tool might fly off during operation. See id. at 755-56. In fact, he further indicated that he knew how to prevent the precise injury caused in that case. See id. Thus, we concluded that any additional warning would have provided plaintiff with no new information, andthus would not logically have affected his behavior. Id. at 755. In this case, we are not presented with similarly uncontroverted evidence demonstrating that Stephen Pavlik was aware at the time of his accident that inhaling butane could cause sudden death or serious bodily harm. Unlike Conti and Overpeck, we have no direct testimony demonstrating the victim's knowledge. We only have evidence before us that Mrs. Pavlik may have warned Stephen (the content and adequacy of which is unclear and hence in dispute), and, at most, the possibility, see S 402A cmt. j, that he read a Clipper warning whose adequacy is likewise at issue. Unlike Overpeck and Conti, therefore, we are not dealing solely with the narrow question whether there is independent evidence demonstrating that a reminder warning would have made a difference. In this case, there are genuine issues of fact concerning whether Stephen Pavlik was adequately warned in the first instance (i.e. was inhalation known to pose a danger of bodily harm), and thus whether the heeding presumption has been rebutted. Moreover, and more importantly, we held in Petree that the user's mere awareness of a hazard does not establish that the user was fully aware of the risk of serious bodily 22 injury, such that the user should be legally accountable. See Petree, 831 F.2d at 1196. In that case, the plaintiff was injured when he was struck in the face by a steel bar which was ejected from a hydraulic press being operated by his fellow employee. The plaintiff alleged that the hydraulic press was defective for lack of a warning regarding the possibility that it could forcefully eject pieces of scrap metal. See id. at 1192. Although there was evidence in the record from the operator of the press and others indicating some prior awareness of the complained of danger, we found that the evidence did not demonstrate an awareness of the full extent that an adequate warning might have provided, and thus held that the failure to warn claim should have gone to the jury. See id. at 1196-97. Similarly, in the present case the defendants' evidence does not demonstrate that a reasonable jury could only conclude that Stephen Pavlik was fully aware of the extreme nature of the consequences he faced when he chose to inhale butane. The injury to the victims in Conti and Overpeck did not result in death, the result that befell Stephen Pavlik here. While our decision in those cases turned on deposition testimony by the victims, defendants here obviously did not have the opportunity to depose Stephen Pavlik and determine what his exact level of knowledge was at the time the injury occurred. However this is a distinction without a difference, for it is not the mere lack of direct testimony by the victim (which would be missing in any products case resulting in death) that distinguishes this case from Conti and Overpeck. We simply find that Pavlik has met his burden of demonstrating that there is a disputed question of fact concerning what Stephen knew and thus whether additional information ex ante would have altered his course of conduct. We also note that while Pavlik has met his burden on summary judgment, he faces the more difficult burden of demonstrating causation to the jury at trial, and the evidence before us now might fall short of that mark. Powell does not command a different result. In that case, the plaintiff, a hospital nurse, was injured when a handtied restraining vest manufactured by the defendant and 23 designed to secure geriatric patients to a chair or bed was removed by a patient, causing the patient to fall. The plaintiff attempted to grab onto the patient as he fell, resulting in an injury to the plaintiff's back. She brought suit against the manufacturer for failure to adequately warn of the danger of the patient's ability to remove the vest by himself. Evidence in the record indicated that the hospital had a policy of using more secure restraining devices in addition to hand-tied vests only on patients who posed a threat of violence or escape. See Powell, 766 F.2d at 134. There was also testimony that the patient involved in the accident was not, at the time of the accident, a known threat. See id. Thus, even if the additional warning desired by the plaintiff in Powell had been affixed, there was no reason to believe that the plaintiff would have acted any differently since she produced no evidence that she would have diverged from hospital policy with this particular patient (i.e. used additional restraints on a non-threatening person) had she been warned that patients using the defendant's vest could untie themselves. See id. In short, although unlike Conti and Overpeck in that Powell does not pose a scenario in which the plaintiff was specifically aware of the complainedof danger, the record made clear that even had she known that patients could untie the defendant's vests themselves, she would not have acted differently. This case is far different from Powell because, as we have explained, the record is not unequivocal as to Stephen Pavlik's knowledge of the dangers posed by butane inhalation and his likely course of conduct. Unlike the defendant in Powell, which introduced the evidence of the hospital policy to demonstrate that (even with the benefit of a heeding presumption) plaintiff had not met her burden of persuasion on the causation issue, here the defendants have not directed us to similar evidence.7 Accordingly, Powell does not control. In sum, although a jury may not _________________________________________________________________ 7. Moreover, Pavlik has introduced evidence that indicates that warnings are heeded in the non-consumable products context presented by this case. Thomas J. Wallace, Ph.D., for example, has stated very plainly that [e]ffective labels do warn and do deter. App. at 352. 24 find enough evidence here to find for Pavlik at trial, he has introduced at least enough to create a genuine issue of material fact precluding summary judgment. III. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress The district court also granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on plaintiff's claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court found no evidence in the record to support plaintiff's contention that defendants' conduct was extreme and outrageous or beyond all bounds of decency. Op. at 11. We agree. As we have explained in prior opinions, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has yet to decide whether a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress is cognizable under Pennsylvania law, see Kazatsky v. King David Memorial Park, Inc., 527 A.2d 988 (Pa. 1987) (leaving to another day whether this cause of action is viable in the Commonwealth), generating confusion among the courts that have been presented with this type of tort claim. Compare, e.g., Andrews v. City of Philadelphia, 895 F.2d 1469, 1486-87 (3d Cir. 1990), with Ford v. Isdaner, 542 A.2d 137, 139 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1988), and Small v. Juniata College, 682 A.2d 350, 355 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1996). We have consistently predicted, however, that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will ultimately recognize this tort. See Trans Penn Wax Corp. v. McCandless, 50 F.3d 217, 232 (3d Cir. 1995); Silver v. Mendel, 894 F.2d 598, 606 (3d Cir. 1990); see also Corbett v. Morgenstern, 934 F. Supp. 680, 683-84 (E.D. Pa. 1996) (noting confusion caused by Kazatsky and our subsequent prediction). We have also predicted that Pennsylvania would generally follow the basic formulation of the tort found in S 46 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. See Trans Penn Wax, 50 F.3d at 232. Section S 46 provides that: One who by extreme and outrageous conduct intentionally or recklessly causes severe emotional distress to another is subject to liability for such emotional distress, and if bodily harm to the other results from it for such bodily harm. 25 See also Small, 682 A.2d at 355 (citing S 46). We have further held that S 46 liability will only be found where the conduct has been so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, as to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community. Restatement (Second) of Torts S 46 cmt. d (cited in Kazatsky, 527 A.2d at 991; Trans Penn Wax, 50 F.3d at 232). This is a heavy burden for a plaintiff to meet, as recovery under S 46 has been highly circumscribed. Kazatsky, 527 A.2d at 991. The thrust of plaintiff's S 46 claim is that Keen was aware that butane inhalation was widespread and deadly, but did nothing about it, while Lane was similarly put on notice and failed to make inquiries into this danger. We agree with the district court that the plaintiff has not adduced sufficient evidence (the sum and substance of which we have outlined in the margin) to justify afinding that either defendant's acts in this regard amount to outrageous conduct that is intolerable in a civilized society.8 _________________________________________________________________ 8. With regard to Keen, plaintiff alleges that the company refused to participate in programs or take independent actions designed to alert the public to the dangers of inhalant abuse despite its knowledge of those dangers. To illustrate this, plaintiff points to Keen's refusal to contribute to a campaign of public interest television advertisements in the United Kingdom and its purported failure to comply with proposals made by Re-Solve, a manufacturer's association. The evidence in the record, however, indicates only (1) that Keen was not asked to contribute to the advertising campaign; and (2) that Keen offered revisions to Re-Solve's proposals and decided to take no action when ReSolve did not respond. See App. at 385, 391-92. Plaintiff also argues that, in response to a set of five recommendations by a British government advisory council designed to curb butane inhalation abuse, Keen only chose to adopt the one measure that it believed could also prove profitable. See App. at 394, 396. While this may be true, and while perhaps the act of following only one of many recommendations proposed by an advisory group may appear suspect, we cannot conclude that this act in this instance constitutes outrageous conduct. The evidence against Lane, plaintiff contends, demonstrates a failure to learn about or prevent death from butane inhalation after Lane was sued in Massachusetts in 1989. However, it is unclear from the record what the precise allegations in the Massachusetts case were, and we 26 See Small, 682 A.2d at 355 (court must initially decide whether defendant's conduct was so extreme and outrageous that recovery may be justified). Accordingly, the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendants will be affirmed on plaintiff's intentional infliction of emotional distress claim. However, as explained above, the order granting summary judgment on the failure to warn claim will be reversed, and the case remanded to the district court for further proceedings. A True Copy: Teste: Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit _________________________________________________________________ could only speculate that the case arose out of similar facts to those alleged here. Moreover, the record only supports the conclusion that Lane viewed the Massachusetts case as an isolated incident that did not warrant further investigation. App. at 400. Furthermore, there is nothing in the record to suggest that Lane was aware that butane was being used as an inhalant prior to that lawsuit, and nothing that suggests that Lane learned from that case that their present warnings were inadequate. Plaintiff also offers other evidence of Lane's alleged failure to inquire into the harmful effects of butane inhalation, including its alleged failure to question why Keen wanted to add the DO NOT BREATHE SPRAY language to the Zeus label in 1987-88, and its alleged failure to reevaluate the Zeus warning when other label changes were proposed in 1992. Once again, we find nothing in the record that demonstrates that Lane's knowledge of the butane abuse problem was such that these actions are indicative of outrageous conduct. 27