Court Opinion

ID: 9470565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:09:21.668577+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:58.437666
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I agree that the instructions regarding the failure to use the safety goggles require a new trial, but I would limit the basis of our decision to that.
I agree that Commander Cipriani should have been accepted as an expert witness competent to testify respecting the design of the stud driver. The Commander was permitted to testify at length as to the perceived defect in the tool, however, and I
think the plaintiff suffered no prejudice warranting reversal.
I also agree that plaintiff’s counsel should have been allowed to use the enlarged photographs of the defendant’s diagrams. It may have been there was some duty on the part of plaintiff’s counsel to clear up the confusion regarding their origin, but, in any event, I do not think denial of the right to use them seriously impaired the effectiveness of the lawyer’s presentation of the plaintiff’s case.
I suppose that the safety goggles were designed and intended to prevent any injury from flying metal fragments, within certain limitations of size and velocity. The difficulty in this case, however, is that there is no proof of that, nor is there proof of the velocity at which the metal fragment was flying at the time it entered the plaintiff’s unprotected eye or any relation of data respecting the size and velocity of that fragment to the design capabilities of safety goggles. The burden of proof was certainly upon the defendant to produce evidence which would support a finding that use of the goggles would have prevented any injury or minimized the harm. In the absence of such evidence, I agree that the instructions relating to the failure to use the goggles were misleading and inappropriate, requiring the granting of a new trial.