Opinion ID: 2550045
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Circumstances of Burns's Injury

Text: [¶ 2] The following facts are taken from the evidence presented by Burns at trial. Burns was employed as a mechanic in the Whited Ford light-duty truck shop in Bangor. Whited owned and operated a commercial garage that had five garage bays used for light-duty automotive repairs. Each of the doors was controlled by an operator with three electric push-buttonsup, down, and stop. The buttons were single-push buttons, such that a person could push the down button and walk away, and the door would close. The operators did not have a safety mechanism that would stop a door from closing if it encountered an obstruction. [¶ 3] In 1996, Whited sought to replace two of its wooden garage doors with new steel doors. Whited purchased replacement doors, manufactured by Wayne-Dalton Corporation, from Architectural Doors and Windows (known then as Portland Glass). ADW installed the doors on Whited's existing garage door operators. [¶ 4] Burns began working at Whited in 1998. In November 2001, he was working on a truck outdoors because all of the garage bays were full. As he was walking into the garage to get a tool, a closing garage door struck his head and knocked him to the ground. He may have noticed the door coming down in the second before it hit him. Although he did not immediately notice any significant injury, over the next days and weeks he began to experience pain in his neck and shoulder from a herniated disc in his neck. He ultimately had surgery and missed eleven weeks of work. [¶ 5] At the time of the accident, Burns had worked at Whited for three years, and he knew how the doors operated. He testified that it was obvious to him that when a garage door was closing, it would not stop if it hit a person or an object. In fact, he had seen vehicles struck by a closing door on at least two occasions. The shop was a busy, noisy place with diesels running, cars running, [and] people hollering, such that a person could not hear the garage doors operating. Burns walked in and out of the garage doorways approximately eight times per workday.