Court Opinion

ID: 9526305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:15:26.648854+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:26.136008
License: Public Domain

Michael J. Kelly, J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent.
It does not require citation of authorities to posit that in Michigan the red-, black-, bold-letter law with regard to proximate cause is that it is a question of fact to be decided by a jury. Doubts about remoteness, intervening acts, and superseding causes almost invariably present questions for the jury. There are two exceptions: when reasonable minds cannot differ, and when the relation between the defect and the injury involves mere conjecture, not reasonable inference. Only in such cases does proximate cause become a question for the court.
In this case, the majority adopts defendant’s arguments in its brief to the effect that Mr. Skinner could not have been misled by the ambiguity of the switch, because the machine was on and was therefore rotating, and the motor was so loud that plaintiffs’ decedent could not have thought the machine was off. Such claims are fact-dependent and fact-disputed. We are not reviewing a trial. This was a summary disposition. If the trial court had viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, then the majority would not have been misled by defendant’s brief into assuming that this cumbersome, Rube Goldberg machine was rotating, tumbling, and roaring at thé critical time when plaintiffs’ decedent was engaged in his usual, customary, and normal procedures for reversal of the drum rotation. Reversal of rotation of the drum was a three-step process. First, the electric power to the motor had to be cut off using the switch manufactured by defendant. Next, two of *672the three wires that ran to the motor had to be reversed. A three-phase power source was used and three wires ran from the switch. At the end of each wire was an. insulated "alligator clip.” Each clip would be attached to one of the three leads from the motor. In order to reverse the motor, two of the three clips would be reversed on the leads from the motor. As the third and final step, the switch would be thrown back to the on position for current to flow to. the motor and turn the drum. The only testimony with regard to Mr. Skinner’s activity in that regard was from his own employees who testified that Mr. Skinner had the reputation of being careful around the shop, and that he always shut off the switch before he reversed the alligator clips.
In Mulholland v DEC Int’l Corp, 432 Mich 395, 415; 443 NW2d 340 (1989), the Supreme Court stated:
A plaintiff in a product liability action need not offer evidence which positively excludes every other possible cause. It is enough that the plaintiff establishes a logical sequence of cause and effect, notwithstanding the existence of other plausible theories, although other plausible theories may also have evidentiary support.
Neither defendants nor the majority have obviated plaintiffs’ theory and the inferences to be drawn from the testimony of the plaintiffs’ witnesses. It was plaintiffs’ theory that Mr. Skinner, looked at the switch and, because of its ambiguous position, believed it to be off. He then grasped the clips and was electrocuted because the switch was, in fact, on. To be sure, there are inconsistencies in the testimony of the witnesses. The witnesses did not make clear whether the machine was operating after the Skinners returned from dinner, but it *673was clearly established by experts for both parties that the power could be on with the switch in an ambiguous position, the tumbler not turning, and the motor not running, because the reversible wires were disconnected. Those are the wires that decedent was holding onto when the witnesses responded to his screams. It does not take a journeyman electrician, let alone a distinguished professor, to make sense of that possible occurrence.
At the hearing with regard to the motion for summary disposition, defendant’s attorney admitted, for purposes of the hearing, that the switch was defective. Until that time, plaintiffs’ heavy guns were loaded to show a defect. The trial court was misdirected into deciding a question of fact concerning contributory or comparative negligence that, although the court might be very apt at anticipating a jury decision regarding the question, was inappropriately decided. The motion was decided by the trial court over the telephone, and it ruled:
Plaintiff has. produced no evidence to show a specific fact issue to support his theory that the switch somehow caused plaintiff’s decedent’s death.
Although pictures of the switch and of the tumbling machine were part of the trial exhibits, it is obvious that the trial court did not have the benefit of the demonstration of the ambiguity of the Square D on-off switch handle that was presented to this Court at oral argument. Ambiguous is a bull’s-eye description of that switch handle. Plaintiffs presented a plausible theory supported by the testimony, exhibits, and inferences that presented a question for the jury. It was not for the trial court to decide "the responsibility of the *674Square D Company in regards to this.” Proximate cause is a question for the jury.
Recently, in Hickey v Zezulka (On Resubmission), 439 Mich 408; 487 NW2d 106 (1992), the Supreme Court held that a Michigan State University Department of Public Safety officer charged with negligence and civil rights violations was entitled to a comparative negligence charge regarding the jail suicide of the plaintiff’s decedent.1 I do not analogize that Mr. Skinner was guilty of an intentional wrongful act such as was Mr. Hickey, but the tried court’s encroachment on the jury’s prerogative in this case seems to posit some such intentional and wilful misconduct. It is of course contrary to the testimony of the plaintiffs’ witnesses and, in fact, construes the defendant’s claims in the light most favorable to defendant. Defendant’s alternative claims were that Mr. Skinner, somehow in the process of climbing up or down off a pallet, slipped and fell, grabbing the hot wires or that he was trying to reverse the direction of the tumbling machine without first turning off the power. Neither of those theories relies on the motion-commotion noise influence relied on by the majority. The parties deposed five experts, each of whom testified with regard to his theory of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Skinner’s fatal accident. In three of those theories there is support for plaintiffs’ position that the physical circumstances combined with the admittedly defective, ambiguous, switch to present a paradigm accident waiting to happen. Questions of proximate cause and comparative negligence were for the jury.
I would reverse.

 "[P]laintiffs complaint alleged negligence, gross negligence, and intentional and grossly negligent acts in violation of Hickey’s civil rights under 42 USC 1983.” Hickey, supra, 417.