Court Opinion

ID: 9450518
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:50:56.023062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:20.355165
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Without suggesting any disagreement with the essential reasoning of Judge McLaughlin’s dissenting opinion, I wish to add a few observations in support of his view that the evidence in this case does not justify the verdict.
The defendant corporation is a manufacturer. It is said to have been negligent in marketing a lift truck not equipped with any structure which would provide lateral support for a load placed on the lift platform.
The controlling principle of law appears in section 388 of the Torts Restatement, which has been cited with ap*522proval by the highest court of Maryland, the state in which this accident occurred. See Babylon v. Scruton, 1958, 215 Md. 299, 308, 138 A.2d 375, 378. That section reads as Hollows:
“Chattel Known to Be Dangerous for Intended Use.
“One who supplies directly or through a third person a chattel for another to use, is subject to liability to those whom the supplier should expect to use the chattel with the consent of the other or to be in the vicinity of its probable use, for bodily harm caused by the use of the chattel in the manner for which and by a person for whose use it is supplied, if the supplier
“(a) knows, or from facts known to him should realize, that the chattel is or is likely to be dangerous for the use for which it is supplied;
“(b) and has no reason to believe that those for whose use the chattel is supplied will realize its dangerous condition * *
While we have found no Maryland decision directly in point, Katz v. Arun-del-Brooks Concrete Corp., 1959, 220 Md. 200, 151 A.2d 731, 78 A.L.R.2d 692, in which the plaintiff suffered burns on his knees caused by kneeling for several hours in ready-mix concrete supplied by the defendant, is suggestive of what the Court might hold if a case like the present one should come before it. Recovery was denied on the ground that the possibly injurious qualities of lime, if not patent, were at least in the realm of common knowledge and that the defendant could not be charged with negligence in supplying the mix without warning purchasers of its harmful possibilities.
Applying section 388 to tjiis case, it is clear that the absence of lateral support and the resultant danger that a stacked load standing loosely on the lift platform would topple and fall from the platform if it should be tilted during lifting, were just as apparent to any user as to the manufacturer. There was no hidden danger or defect here. Indeed, the injured workman admitted that he was aware, as he must have been, that tilting would cause the stacked load of corrugated paper to collapse and fall from the lift.
It seems to me that these facts preclude any finding that the manufacturer was derelict in his duty as defined and limited by section 388(b) of the Torts Restatement. Yet, the jury found that the manufacturer had been negligent, and that the user was not contributorily negligent. It may well have been that the user’s employer was negligent in requiring him to use this lift for high stacking. However, the defendant here is not the employer, but the manufacturer, whose liability is limited by the principles stated in section 388.
Accordingly, I think the verdict should not be allowed to stand.