Court Opinion

ID: 9561494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:10:37.793506+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:50.122947
License: Public Domain

Justice ERICKSON
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The court of appeals reversed a judgment entered on a defense verdict and ordered a new trial. Armentrout v. FMC Corp., 819 P.2d 522 (Colo.App.1991). We granted certiorari to review four issues.
1. Whether the “open and obvious” nature of a risk is a defense to a strict liability claim for failure to warn.
2. Whether the “benefit” of a specific design is an affirmative defense to a strict liability claim for defective design under the risk-benefit test.
3. Whether the jury must be instructed on the meaning of “defective” in the context of a strict liability claim for defective design.
4. Whether the court of appeals misapplied Schmutz v. Bolles, 800 P.2d 1307 (Colo.1990), in concluding that “the record contains evidence that such misuse may have been unforeseeable by the defendant.”
While I concur with the majority’s holding that the trial court properly instructed the jury on the open and obvious doctrine in this case, I disagree with the majority’s attempt to extend its holding to create a *190new “Camacho efficacy test” in future open and obvious danger cases. Rather, I believe that, in failure-to-warn cases, the open and obvious doctrine can bar plaintiffs’ failure-to-warn claims, even though a warning of a particular obvious danger may make a product safer. I also agree with the majority that a plaintiff always bears the burden of proving that the actual design was unreasonably dangerous and that a jury should be instructed on the definition of “defective” for purposes of design-defect claims. However, I disagree that foreseeability of the harm in obvious danger cases prohibits a jury instruction on the defense of misuse, and with the majority’s application of Schmutz v. Bolles, 800 P.2d 1307 (Colo.1990) to the facts in this, an obvious danger, case.
I
The petitioner, Lynn Armentrout (plaintiff), brought a personal injury action against the respondent, FMC Corporation (defendant), for injuries he suffered in a work-related accident. Armentrout’s wife also asserted a claim for loss of consortium. The defendant is a manufacturer of heavy construction equipment, and built and sold the mobile crane model HC-238A that is the subject of this lawsuit. The model HC-238A mobile crane is forty-eight feet long and consists of two primary components; the crane superstructure which is capable of lifting and moving, equipment and concrete weighing in excess of 120 tons; and the truck base and platform on which the superstructure is attached. See Appendix A (photographs of the mobile crane model HC-238A and the site of the pinch-point injury). The superstructure rotates 180 degrees on an axis, thereby creating several “pinch points.” 1 One of these pinch points is located on the truck base in an area called the forward luggage carrier. Armentrout was crushed when he was struck by the rotating superstructure while he was standing or kneeling in the forward luggage carrier with his back to the superstructure.
Armentrout and the crane’s operator, Jeffery Wassam, had worked together as a two-man team running various cranes for more than two years. On the date of the accident, the two men were employed by Derr-Gruenewald Construction Company who had purchased the HC-238A mobile crane from FMC. When the mobile crane was delivered, FMC provided instruction manuals that warned of working on the platform on the truck while the crane was in operation, and of the dangers at the pinch points.
The two men, who had been operating the HC-238A mobile crane as a team for five months, were using the crane at a job site for the third consecutive day to move and install 70,000 pound concrete panels. While Wassam was operating the crane, Armentrout was cleaning oil and dirt off of the platform on the truck. At some point, while Wassam was rotating the crane superstructure to pick up another concrete panel, Armentrout either slipped or stepped into the forward luggage carrier, and was crushed at the pinch point when the crane superstructure passed over the luggage carrier on the truck.
The record contains evidence that not only were the oilers instructed not to work on the platform of the truck when the crane was in motion, but also that the crane operators were instructed not to rotate the superstructure of the crane when anyone was on the truck’s platform. However, it was the common practice among many oilers to confront the known danger of working within the swing radius of the crane superstructure while it was in operation to simplify the cleaning of the mobile crane. Both Armentrout and Wassam were aware of the dangers of working on the truck’s platform, and Armentrout knew the crane was operating at the time he was on the platform.
Following a jury verdict in favor of FMC on all claims, Armentrout appealed to the *191court of appeals alleging various errors. The court of appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial on the following grounds:
1. It was reversible error for the district court to reject plaintiffs’ requested jury instruction that the negligence of third persons is not a defense to defendant’s own negligence.
2. It was reversible error for the district court to exclude reports to FMC of similar accidents as inadmissible hearsay if they are admitted only for the limited purpose of establishing notice to the manufacturer.
Certiorari was not granted to review the order granting a new trial or the reasons stated in the court of appeals decision for ordering a new trial.
II
In section II of the majority opinion, the majority rejects, as the rule in Colorado, the open and obvious doctrine. The majority says that the “open and obvious nature of a risk is not necessarily a complete defense to a strict liability failure-to-warn claim.” Maj. at 181.2 Rather, the majority concludes that “the obviousness of the danger and efficacy of the proposed warning are factors which the trial court should consider in determining whether the defendant has a duty to warn the plaintiff” (“Camacho efficacy test”). Id.3 Therefore, the majority holds that there is no duty to warn unless there is a substantial likelihood that the proposed warning would have prevented injury to the plaintiff. Id. However, the majority determines that because Armentrout failed to prove that a warning decal would have prevented his injury, the majority’s newly developed “Camacho efficacy test” cannot be applied to the facts of this case.4 I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the open and obvious doctrine as the applicable no-duty rule in Colorado has been abandoned.
A danger is either open and obvious, so that a manufacturer is under no legal duty to provide additional warnings even though some warning may have, in some way, reduced the risk, or the danger is not open and obvious. A manufacturer should still be able to rely on the certainty established by the doctrine to bar a plaintiff’s failure-to-warn claim in obvious-danger cases. See Kysor Industrial Corp. v. Frazier, 642 P.2d 908, 911 (Colo.1982) (“Strict liability is not the equivalent of absolute liability. Because the law does not require a manufacturer to be the virtual insurer of its products, the scope of liability under section 402A is limited.”)
*192In Camacho v. Honda Motor Company, 741 P.2d 1240 (Colo.1987), we stated that the obviousness of a danger does not mean a product could not be designed to be safer. However, if a product is obviously dangerous, a warning will not lower the risk to a user of that product’s dangerous characteristics. Simply because we properly rejected the obvious-danger rule in design-defect cases does not mean that we should now reject it in failure-to-warn cases. Certain dangers are so obvious that no warning would serve to lower the risk or better inform consumers, and consequently, manufacturers have no duty to warn of such dangers.
Warning of a product’s dangers serves two distinct purposes. First, a warning may reduce the risk of injury by allowing consumers to be more careful than they would if they were unaware of the risk or danger. Second, product warnings provide information necessary to allow consumers to decide whether or not they wish to confront certain risks regardless of a product’s dangerous characteristics.
No legal duty should be imposed on a product manufacturer to provide a warning to a user where the warning conveys only that information which a user would glean from the observation of, or use of, the product. See Bavuso v. Caterpillar Indus., Inc., 408 Mass. 694, 563 N.E.2d 198, 202 (1990) (holding that there is no duty to warn of danger where danger was such that no one who thought about it, certainly no experienced equipment operator, could fail to appreciate it). A duty to warn arises only where, as between a manufacturer and a user, an imbalance exists with respect to their relative knowledge of a risk of harm associated with a product that would be eliminated with a proper warning. See National Bank of Bloomington v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 175 Ill.Dec. 817, 600 N.E.2d 1275 (1992) (“Generally, a duty to warn arises when there is unequal knowledge with respect to the risk of harm, and the manufacturer, possessed of such knowledge knows or should know that harm might occur absent a warning.”). In this case, in addition to the dangers of the pinch-points being obvious to the ordinary user, Armentrout testified that he knew of the dangers of working on the crane while it was operating and knew of the risks which confronted him in violating the instructions that were provided to him in the operator manuals. There was simply no additional information about the dangers of the pinch points on the HC-238A mobile crane that would have equalized the balance of knowledge as between Armentrout and FMC.
A manufacturer, as a matter of law, not as a matter of fact, owes no duty to warn a reasonable person of an open and obvious danger. The majority, by requiring the trial judge to weigh various factors to determine whether a manufacturer is required to warn of open and obvious dangers, rejects the generally accepted majority rule that there is simply no legal duty to warn of these dangers. See, e.g., Hawkins v. Montgomery Industries Int'l, Inc., 536 So.2d 922 (Ala.1988); Scheller v. Wilson Certified Foods, Inc., 114 Ariz. 159, 559 P.2d 1074 (1976); Bojorquez v. House of Toys, Inc., 62 Cal.App.3d 930, 133 Cal.Rptr. 483 (1976); Babine v. Gilley’s Bronco Shop, Inc., 488 So.2d 176 (Fla.App.1986); Weatherby v. Honda Motor Co., 195 Ga.App. 169, 393 S.E.2d 64 (1990); Miller v. Dvornik, 149 Ill.App.3d 883, 103 Ill.Dec. 139, 501 N.E.2d 160 (1986); Maguire v. Pabst Brewing Co., 387 N.W.2d 565 (Iowa 1986); Long v. Deere & Co., 238 Kan. 766, 715 P.2d 1023 (1986); Fiorentino v. A.E. Staley Mfg. Co., 11 Mass.App. 428, 416 N.E.2d 998 (1981); Mach v. General Motors Corp., 112 Mich.App. 158, 315 N.W.2d 561 (1982); Dulik v. K-Mart Discount Stores, Inc., 57 Ohio App.3d 61, 566 N.E.2d 710 (1989); Reece v. Lowe’s of Boone, Inc., 754 S.W.2d 67 (Tenn.App.1988); Beans v. Entex, Inc., 744 S.W.2d 323 (Tex.App.1988); Baughn v. Honda Motor Co., 107 Wash.2d 127, 727 P.2d 655 (1986); Parker v. Heasler Plumbing & Heating Co., 388 P.2d 516 (Wyo.1964). See also 3 American Law of Products Liability 3d § 33:25 (1987) (cataloging cases and noting that there “is generally no duty to warn where the danger is open and obvious or apparent, and the product is not defectively de*193signed or manufactured”); James A. Henderson, Jr. & Aaron D. Twerski, Doctrinal Collapse in Products Liability: The Empty Shell of Failure to Warn, 65 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 265, 280-82 (1990) (noting that the “general rule in American products law is that defendants owe no duty to warn of risks that are obvious to normal, reasonable users and consumers”). In my view, a plaintiff should be required to prove that a warning is necessary to reduce the risk of injury, and that a warning would have reduced the risk or provided a user with an opportunity to evaluate the risk confronting him.5
I also view the majority’s reliance on Union Supply Company v. Pust, 196 Colo. 162, 583 P.2d 276 (1978), Camacho v. Honda Motor Company, 741 P.2d 1240 (Colo.1987), and Anderson v. M.W. Kellogg, Company, 766 P.2d 637 (Colo.1988) as misplaced. Union Supply addressed defenses that were available to a defendant in both design-defect and failure-to-warn actions. Although Union Supply questioned the applicability of the “open and obvious defense” to both of these strict product liability claims for relief, it did not resolve the applicability of the doctrine in either design-defect or failure-to-warn cases.6 In Camacho, we addressed, and properly rejected, the open and obvious doctrine in design-defect cases. In Anderson,'we used language contained in Camacho while addressing a products liability claim which was barred by our now repealed statute of repose.
While the language in each of the cited cases lends support to the majority’s determination that the open and obvious danger of a product is not a complete bar to failure-to-warn claims, we have never affirmatively adopted the view stated by the majority in this case.7 Rather, the majority’s *194current view, that this court has long recognized that the open and obvious rule is not a complete bar to a plaintiffs failure-to-warn claim, is based primarily on this court’s discussion of the doctrine in Camacho. Because I do not view Camacho as rejecting the open and obvious rule in failure-to-warn cases, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion and expansion of Camacho.
Camacho involved a situation in which Honda already produced a design option for its motorcycles which may have made the product safer. In ruling on the plaintiff’s failure-to-warn claim, a divided court said that where a design option has been made available by the manufacturer that may reduce the risk of injury to purchasers of a product, manufacturers may be obligated to disclose the availability of that option to purchasers. Camacho, 741 P.2d at 1248. Requiring affirmative disclosure of the availability of design options is not the same as requiring a manufacturer to warn of obvious dangers.
In Camacho, we did not say that Honda was required to warn Camacho about the obvious dangers of riding a motorcycle even if such a warning would have reduced the risk to Camacho. Nor did we reject the open and obvious doctrine in failure-to-warn cases by requiring that a trial court decide the duty issue on a case by case basis. In my view, the holding of Camacho simply does not apply to the facts in this case. Like Camacho’s decision to ride a motorcycle, Armentrout was well aware of the danger he exposed himself to when he worked on the crane’s stationary platform while the crane’s superstructure was rotating. However, unlike Honda, FMC did not offer safety options, the disclosure of which would have lowered the risk to Armentrout. Because Camacho did not limit or modify the traditional no-duty rule, but rather provided for an exception to the rule which is not applicable under the facts of this case, we should not now read it as rejecting the traditional no-duty rule.
Armentrout claims that by failing to install a warning bell or light on the HC-238A mobile crane, FMC breached its duty to warn him that the superstructure was in motion. Armentrout’s argument mischar-acterizes his design-defect claim as a failure-to-warn claim. A warning device like that sought by Armentrout would not provide a warning of the danger of pinch points since that danger is obvious and was known to Armentrout. Rather, the warning device Armentrout seeks is a design alteration that could possibly make the crane less dangerous as a whole.8 The majority correctly analyzes that part of Armentrout’s claims under Armentrout’s design-defect claim. See, e.g., Weatherby v. Honda Motor Co., 195 Ga.App. 169, 393 S.E.2d 64 (1990); FMC Corp. v. Brown, 526 N.E.2d 719 (Ind.App.1988), aff'd, 551 N.E.2d 444 (Ind.1990); Braxton v. Georgia Pacific Corp., 419 So.2d 125 (La.App.1982); Glavin v. Baker Material Handling Corp., 144 Mich.App. 147, 373 N.W.2d 272 (1985). The jury instruction relating to a claim based on defective design does not encompass the open and obvious doctrine. See CJI-Civ.3d 14:19 (1989).
I concur in the result the majority reaches in section II. However, I disagree that we should reject the open and obvious doctrine by adopting the “Camacho efficacy test” in failure-to-warn cases. In my view, it always has been, and should still be, the rule in Colorado that manufacturers owe no legal duty to warn of open and obvious dangers. Additionally, I believe that it is error to characterize a design-defect claim as a failure-to-warn claim.
Ill
The majority concludes that FMC presented “no competent evidence which would support a conclusion that the prod-
*195uct misuse was unforeseeable.” Maj. at 189. Therefore, relying on Sehmutz v. Bolles, 800 P.2d 1307 (Colo.1990), the majority holds that the court of appeals improperly affirmed the district court’s submission of a misuse instruction to the jury. Maj. at 189.9 In my view, the court of appeals correctly upheld the district court’s instruction on the defense of misuse. The question of misuse in this case was properly presented for determination by the jury. I dissent from the majority’s holding that the court of appeals erred in affirming the district court’s submission of a misuse instruction.
Misuse is a defense to a product liability action under the doctrine of strict liability, but only if the misuse is unforeseeable by the manufacturer. Uptain v. Huntington Lab, Inc., 723 P.2d 1322, 1325 (Colo.1986). Where a warning is given, the seller may reasonably assume that it will be read and heeded. Id. at 1326. In Sehmutz, we interpreted Uptain, and said that a defendant who could reasonably foresee the possibility of misuse is not entitled to the defense. Sehmutz, 800 P.2d at 1316. The majority relies on this statement and finds no competent evidence in the record which would support the conclusion that the product misuse was unforeseeable. Maj. at 189. Therefore, the majority states that FMC is not entitled to the benefit of the defense and the jury instruction on misuse was error. The majority opinion expands Sehmutz to cover open and obvious danger cases so that the defense of misuse will no longer be available. In Sehmutz, we held that the misuse defense was not properly submitted to the jury where the manufacturer of a cranial drill received over thirty reports of a latent malfunction due to improper cleaning and that failure to properly clean the drill might injure innocent nonusers of the product. In my view, Sehmutz does not address the open and obvious danger issue, and should not be interpreted as controlling on that issue.
The majority also rejects FMC’s argument that Armentrout’s conduct while working on the HC-238A mobile crane was unforeseeable. FMC argues that the warning provisions in the operators manual entitles them to the presumption of unforesee-ability that we articulated in Uptain. In rejecting FMC’s argument, the majority distinguishes Uptain from the present case by finding that, unlike Uptain where an adequate warning reached the user, in this case, there “is evidence that Armentrout did not receive the warnings in the manual and such evidence places in question the adequacy of the warnings provided the users of the crane.” Maj. at 188. The majority reasons that there is no warning which Armentrout could have read or heeded and thus, the presumption set forth in Uptain does not apply. Id. I disagree.
Our decision in Uptain held that “the question of whether it was foreseeable that a user of [a caustic cleaning compound] would wring out a cloth with her bare hands was properly reserved for jury deter-mination_” Uptain, 723 P.2d at 1326. In Uptain, we stated that where a user of a product receives a warning, he is presumed to heed that warning. Whether Ar-mentrout actually received the warnings in the manual is not dispositive of the question of the adequacy of warnings for purposes of the Uptain presumption. It is undisputed that Armentrout knew the dangers of working on the truck’s platform on the mobile crane while the crane was being operated. In this case, an adequate warning of the danger of injury by being crushed at the crane’s pinch points was provided by Armentrout’s employer, his past work on the crane and truck, his current work on the crane and truck, and by plain view of the crane in operation. In my view, Sehmutz does not stand for the proposition that any manufacturer that is *196on notice of prior incidents of product misuse, or warns against product misuse, cannot defend against a product liability claim on the basis of that misuse when the danger confronted by the consumer is open and obvious. Rather, in open and obvious danger cases, the jury could rationally decide that a manufacturer should be able to rely on the user to take reasonable precautions to protect himself against a harm which is obvious to a reasonable person, and the jury should receive an appropriate instruction.
At trial, FMC presented substantial evidence that Armentrout’s work on the HC-238A mobile crane violated generally accepted operating procedures and was an unsafe practice. Accordingly, whether or not Armentrout’s conduct of working on the HC-238A mobile crane was misuse, and if it was, whether that misuse was foreseeable to FMC are questions for the jury. See Uptain v. Huntington Lab, Inc., 723 P.2d 1322 (Colo.1986); Brown v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 136 Ariz. 556, 667 P.2d 750 (1983). I dissent from that portion of the majority opinion that holds the jury was improperly instructed on the misuse defense.
IV
In conclusion, while I concur with the majority’s holding that the trial court properly instructed the jury on the open and obvious doctrine in this case, I disagree with the majority’s attempt to extend its holding to create a new “Camacho efficacy test” in future open and obvious danger cases. Rather, I believe that, in failure-to-warn cases, the open and obvious doctrine can bar plaintiffs’ failure-to-warn claims, even though a warning of a particular obvious danger may make a product safer. I also agree with the majority that a plaintiff always bears the burden of proving that the actual design was unreasonably dangerous and that a jury should be instructed on the definition of “defective” for purposes of design-defect claims. However, I disagree that foreseeability of the harm in obvious danger cases prohibits a jury instruction on the defense of misuse, and with the majority’s application of Schmutz v. Bolles, 800 P.2d 1307 (Colo.1990) to the facts in this obvious danger case.
I am authorized to say that Chief Justice ROVIRA joins in this concurrence and dissent, and Justice VOLLACK joins in part II of this concurrence and dissent.
*197[[Image here]]

. A pinch point occurs when the rotating superstructure comes in close proximity to the truck base.

. I disagree with the majority’s failure to recognize that the open and obvious doctrine in Colorado is not a defense. Rather, the well-established doctrine states that a manufacturer is under no legal duty to warn of obvious risks. See 3 American Law of Products Liability 3d, § 33:25 (1987). This treatise notes that
[w]here the risks of the product are discernible by casual inspection, such as the danger that a knife can cut, or a stove can burn, the consumer is in just as good of a position as the manufacturer to gauge the dangers associated with the product, and nothing is gained by imposing on the manufacturer the duty to warn. Similarly, a manufacturer is not required to provide its machinery with warning devices such as bells or lights only where the danger is obvious.
Id. The treatise goes on to note that "the open and obvious doctrine may bar the plaintiffs claim, and not simply be a defense to that claim....” Id.

. The “Camacho efficacy test” places in the hands of the trial judge the responsibility of determining whether a manufacturer owes a consumer a duty to warn of dangers associated with the product by weighing the obviousness of the danger with the efficacy of the proposed warning. Maj. at 181. I agree that determination of the duty owed is a question of law, for the court to decide, but it is the law in Colorado that a manufacturer is under no duty to warn of risks that are open and obvious to the reasonable user of the product. See Davis v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 719 P.2d 324, 327 (Colo.App.1985) (holding that manufacturer owed no duty to warn of dangerous condition where the existence of that condition was generally known and recognized). See abo Kysor Industrial Corp. v. Frazier, 642 P.2d 908 (Colo.1982).

.Although Armentrout failed to state at trial that a warning decal would have prevented his injuries, I fail to see when in the future, if viewed with twenty-twenty hindsight and the benefit of the majority’s new test, a specific warning proposed by an injured user would not have reduced the risk to the user in some way. It is precisely the benefit of hindsight which allows a user to claim at trial that even though the risk was open and obvious to an ordinary user a warning directed explicitly at him would have prevented his injury.

. See, e.g., James A. Henderson, Jr. & Aaron D. Twerski, Products Liability, Problems and Process 387-88 (1987) ("Under every approach taken in every jurisdiction, the plaintiff must show that the defendant’s failure to warn was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury. To do that, the plaintiff must show that if an adequate instruction or warning had been given, the addressee (typically the product user or consumer) would have acted differently in a manner that would have reduced or avoided the plaintiff’s injury.”); James A. Henderson, Jr., Manufacturers' Liability for Defective Product Design: A Proposed Statutory Reform, 56 N.C.L.Rev. 625, 630 n. 26 (1978) (noting that under a statutory proposal sponsored by the National Products Liability Council, there is "a requirement, in failure to warn cases ... that the plaintiff prove a definite causal connection between the alleged failure to warn and the injuries suffered”).

. The majority now reads Union Supply as rejecting the open and obvious doctrine as a complete bar in failure-to-warn cases. See maj. at 9n. Union Supply recognized that the origin of the open and obvious doctrine was the case of Campo v. Scofield, 301 N.Y. 468, 95 N.E.2d 802 (1950). Campo, a design-defect case was overruled in Micallef v. Miehle Co., 39 N.Y.2d 376, 384 N.Y.S.2d 115, 348 N.E.2d 571 (1976), another design defect case. In my view, the concern we exhibited in Union Supply was limited to design defect cases. This concern is evidenced by our rejection of the open and obvious doctrine in Camacho, as well as our note in Union Supply that "the Washington Court of Appeals has commented: ' * * * [T]he manufacturer of the obviously defective product ought not to escape because the product was obviously a bad one. The law, we think, ought to discourage misdesign rather than encouraging it in its obvious form.’ ” Union Supply, 196 Colo, at 175, 583 P.2d at 284 (quoting Palmer v. Massey Ferguson, Inc., 3 Wash.App. 508, 476 P.2d 713 (1970)) (emphasis added).

.The majority claims that while the instruction to the jury in this case, which was based upon CJI-Civ.3d 14:20, was correct, future cases may require the trial court to modify the instruction pursuant to the newly developed “Camacho efficacy test.” See maj. at 181. In so stating, the majority abandons a well-established no-duty rule that is currently the law in Colorado. CJI-Civ.3d 14:20 currently provides:
A product is defective and unreasonably dangerous if it is not accompanied by sufficient warnings or instructions for use. To be sufficient, such warnings or instructions for use must adequately inform the ordinary user of any specific risk of harm which may be involved in any intended or reasonably expected use.
However, if a specific risk of harm would be apparent to an ordinary user from the product itself, a warning of or instructions concerning that specific risk of harm is not required.
See also CJI-Civ.3d 14:20 (1989). This instruction recognizes that this court has never rejected the open and obvious doctrine. Rather, this instruction requires that a jury determine whether or not a specific risk of harm was obvious to an ordinary user. If a risk is obvious, a manufacturer is not required (has no duty) to provide a warning or instructions.

. For example: A forklift moving in reverse is obviously dangerous. A dock worker knows that standing behind a forklift while it is moving in reverse would subject him to potentially severe injury. A buzzer warning a dock worker that a forklift is moving in reverse may be a desirable design feature lowering the obvious danger by instructing the worker to get out of the way. However, a buzzer does not change the fact that standing behind a moving forklift is obviously dangerous.

. The instruction in question was based on CJI-Civ.3d 14:22 (1989), which states:
A manufacturer of a product is not legally responsible for injuries caused by a product if: (1) the product is used in a manner or for a purpose other than that which was intended and that use could not reasonably have been expected by the manufacturer; and (2) such use rather than a defect, If any, in the product caused the plaintiffs’ claimed injuries.
CJI-Civ.3d 14:22 (1989).