Opinion ID: 218972
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Products Liability Claims

Text: Resolute's products liability claims against Webasto are controlled by the federal common law of maritime torts, which is informed by the American Law Institute's Restatement of Torts. See Pan-Alaska Fisheries, Inc. v. Marine Constr. & Design Co., 565 F.2d 1129, 1134 (9th Cir. 1977). We have previously adopted Section 402-A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts as the law of products liability in admiralty cases. See id. at 1134-35; see also Saratoga Fishing Co. v. Marco Seattle Inc., 69 F.3d 1432, 1437-38 (9th Cir. 1995), rev'd on other grounds sub nom. Saratoga Fishing Co. v. J.M. Martinac & Co., 520 U.S. 875, 117 S.Ct. 1783, 138 L.Ed.2d 76 (1997). In Saratoga Fishing, we also relied on a preliminary version of the Products Liability Section of the Restatement (Third) of Torts, although we declined at that time to adopt that early draft as controlling. See Saratoga Fishing, 69 F.3d at 1441 (citing Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 2, Tentative Draft No. 1, 1994). Since the Restatement (Third) was finalized in 1998, however, we and other circuits have relied on it. See St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Lago Canyon, Inc., 561 F.3d 1181, 1190 n. 18 (11th Cir.2009); Krummel v. Bombardier Corp., 206 F.3d 548, 552 (5th Cir.2000); All Alaskan Seafoods, Inc. v. Raychem Corp., 197 F.3d 992, 995 (9th Cir.1999). We agree with the parties that we should look to the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability to guide our assessment of Resolute's products liability claims, and we therefore apply its principles below. [1] See Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 2 (1998) (hereinafter Restatement) (defining categories of product defects, including design defects and defects due to inadequate instructions and warnings). [2]
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.
Resolute also contends the heater was defectively designed because it should have been equipped with an automatic current shutoff like all home furnaces are equipped with. The district court rejected this claim for three reasons: (1) the proposed alternative design is not based on any industry regulations or standards; (2) Resolute presented no evidence that any other marine heater manufacturer includes such a [shut-off] device on their products; and (3) Resolute presented no evidence that the proposed shutoff device would have been simple and cheap to implement. We find the first two observations inadequate to justify granting summary judgment, and we disagree with the third. Compliance with applicable safety standards does not insulate a manufacturer from defective product claims. See Saratoga Fishing, 69 F.3d at 1441-42 (affirming the district court's conclusion that although... [the manufacturers'] failure to use [the proposed alternative design] at the time of construction did not violate any industry rules or standards ... the design [was] unreasonably dangerous and defective because the design included a high risk of danger and there was a feasible alternative). Furthermore, even though it may be difficult for the plaintiff to prove that an alternative design could have been practically adopted when the defendant's product is the safest in use at the time of sale, this fact is not necessarily dispositive. Restatement § 2 cmt. d. If it were, there could be no first case demanding improvement of an unsafe (but widely accepted) product design. Finally, we do not agree with the district court that Resolute failed to present any proof that its proposed alternative design would be simple and cheap to implement. Way opined that the heater should have been designed with a built-in safety switch to automatically disconnect power to the heater in the same manner as is commonly used in home furnaces. He stated that this design modification would have been simple to implement, because [i]n the Webasto case there were two components that could be disassembled, and there was a very easy place to mount either a wire coupling or a safety switch so that if the burner head were removed, it would automatically and positively disconnect power. Way's description of the simplicity of the proposed design modification, together with the evidence that similar safety features are routinely included in home heaters, sufficed to raise a genuine issue of material fact. See Restatement § 2 cmt. d (If the plaintiff introduces expert testimony to establish that a reasonable alternative design could practically have been adopted, a trier of fact may conclude that the product was defective notwithstanding that such a design was not adopted by any manufacturer, or even considered for commercial use, at the time of sale.). We therefore vacate summary judgment on the design defect claim. [3]