Court Opinion

ID: 9470959
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:21:42.7534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:12.478043
License: Public Domain

BUTZNER, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree with the court’s exposition of the law. I disagree about application of the law to the jury instructions.
The only proof of the forklift’s unfitness was its defective design which made it unreasonably dangerous when the manufacturer sold it.
The court correctly told the jury that in order for the plaintiff to recover she had to show that the forklift was unfit when it was made available for the buyer’s use in 1944 or 1948. The instructions explained that the word “unfit” meant “reasonably dangerous or a condition that subjects the users of the forklift to an unreasonable risk of injury.” The court emphasized the importance of the time for determining whether the forklift was unfit by telling the jury that they should consider the state of technology and art on the subject “as it was in the years 1944 and at the latest ’48 because they are the crucial years when this product was in the — last in the possession of the defendant.”
The instructions on warning must be considered in the context of the entire charge. They cannot be divorced from the following paragraph of the charge:
In order to find an obligation to warn, however, you must first find that there was an unfit condition to warn about and that a warning was necessary to prevent the forklift from being unreasonably dangerous or subjecting its users to an unreasonable risk of injury.
Thus, the jury could not base its verdict solely on a lack of warning in 1977. Under the instructions of the court, the jury first had to find “an unfit condition to warn *1047about.” The only “unfit condition” was defective design which the court had told the jury must be determined by the state of the art in the 1940’s.
Parenthetically, if the manufacturer had fulfilled its warranty by giving adequate warning when it sold the forklift in the 1940’s, the court’s instruction about warning in 1977 would have injected error in the case. But this is not the situation, for the evidence is undisputed that the manufacturer gave no warning when it sold the defectively designed machine.
In sum, considering the charge as a whole, I believe that the instructions about warning did not mislead the jury. In order for the plaintiff to prevail, the jury was required to find that the forklift was unfit when it left the manufacturer’s hands. Because the evidence was sufficient to support such a finding, I would affirm the judgment entered on the verdict of the jury.