Court Opinion

ID: 9693356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:38:30.161262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:45.450751
License: Public Domain

Bronson, P.J.
(dissenting). I would remand to the trial judge. He stated:
"The inevitable conclusion in the instant case must be that plaintiff having failed to make a showing, even prima facie, of negligence on the part of defendant, and having failed to show a causal connection that the proximate cause of this unfortunate accident was the negligence of defendant, has failed to sustain the burden of proof as set forth and required by the above cited cases, the court must find no cause of action against the defendant. A judgment in conformity with this opinion may be presented.”
This language indicates that the trial judge held that a deficiency in plaintiff’s proofs precluded his recovery as a matter of law. I do not think the trial judge’s decision was made in his role as trier of fact. I must conclude, therefore, that in analyz*729ing his decision our review should be analogous to a review of a directed verdict. Because I think the trial judge used an improper legal standard against which to measure plaintiffs proofs, I would reverse.
The trial judge ruled that, absent evidence that an intervening handler (defendant’s distributor) had not mishandled a product, he could not find that a defect in the beer bottle was traceable to defendant. The trial court should have asked whether, given all the circumstances, it was reasonable to infer that a defect in the product (either in the bottle itself or in the pressure of the gas and liquid within it) existed at the time the product left the manufacturer. Holloway v General Motors Corp (On Rehearing), 403 Mich 614, 621; 271 NW2d 777 (1978). In Holloway, supra, p 622 the Court quoted the following language from its opinion in Schoepper v Hancock Chemical Co, 113 Mich 582, 586, 589; 71 NW 1081 (1897), which had been reaffirmed in Schedlbauer v Chris-Craft Corp, 381 Mich 217, 230; 160 NW2d 889 (1968):
" 'It is true that where an injury occurs that cannot be accounted for and where the occasion of it rests wholly in conjecture, the case may fail for want of proof. * * * But such cases are rare, and that rule should never be so extended as to result in a failure of justice, or in denying an injured person a right of action where there is room for balancing the probabilities, and for drawing reasonable inferences better supported upon one side than upon the other. * * * ”[T]he question of whether the inference suggested by the plaintiffs theory is the correct one, or whether it was sufficiently rebutted, was for the jury.’ (Emphasis supplied.)”
I think that an inference that the bottle was defective when it left defendant’s control is one *730which might reasonably have been drawn by the trier of fact.
In this case, beer had been delivered to the place of plaintiff’s employment and stored in a dry storage room. Plaintiff removed the beer from the storage room and transported it to the bar area where he left it for 20 minutes. As he picked up a bottle, it exploded in his hand. The explosion sounded like a firecracker going off. After the explosion, the top part of the broken bottle remained capped.
I see no important distinction between the facts of this case and those of Pattinson v Coca-Cola Bottling Co of Port Huron, 333 Mich 253, 263-264; 52 NW2d 688 (1952), where the Court stated:
"We think that the evidence that the bottle exploded, throwing the particles of glass toward plaintiff and her witnesses, that no external force of any kind was applied to the bottle from which breaking might have resulted, and that a short time previously another bottle in the same container had exploded under like circumstances, together with the proof as to the process observed in inspecting and filling the bottles and regulating the carbonation of the content thereof, was sufficient to support a legitimate conclusion as to the cause of the breaking.”
In Pattinson, the evidence concerning "the process observed in inspecting and filling the bottles” was evidence favoring defendant. This leaves the shattering of a nearby bottle the only evidence favoring plaintiff in Pattinson not present in plaintiff’s proofs here. Where, as here, the bottle which shattered was packaged with other bottles by the manufacturer, the shattering of a nearby bottle would make the inference that the product was defective when it left the manufacturer’s control no more reasonable. Correspondingly, such evi*731dence would have no effect on the reasonableness of an inference that the defect was due to mishandling by a distributor. If one bottle were mishandled, it is likely that any bottles in the same container were equally mishandled.
The majority states:
"In the present case, plaintiff needed to connect the alleged defect with the defendant. In order to do that, plaintiff had to overcome testimony in the case that it might have been a third party who delivered the bottle or show that the third party did not mishandle the bottle.”
I disagree. The circumstances in which the injury occurred were such that they supported a reasonable inference that the manufacturer, and not the distributor, was at fault. The manufacturer delivered a packaged product to the distributor who delivered it to plaintiff’s employer. There is testimony of no mishandling after receipt of the beer by the employer. I will assume that a trier of fact would find that the product was defective at the time it exploded, sending shards of glass into plaintiff’s eye. We must examine three possibilities: no mishandling by the distributor, some mishandling by the distributor, and gross mishandling by the distributor. The product was defective even if some mishandling occurred. The manufacturer should expect some degree of mishandling by its distributors and consumers. A trier of fact should be able to find a product like a beer bottle defective when it left the factory if the bottle exploded when picked up even if some mishandling occurred. This leaves us to consider the possibility of gross mishandling by the distributor. I think a reasonable trier of fact, even without the benefit of expert testimony, can conclude that the chance *732that distributor mishandling led to an explosion is of a fairly low order of probability. Accordingly, a trier of fact should be able to infer that it is reasonably probable that the defect existed when the product left the bottler’s control.
It is also important to consider the practical effects of a requirement that plaintiffs prove that no gross distributor mishandling occurred in an "exploding bottle” case. It seems highly improbable that either party will be able to present substantial direct evidence of mishandling. In most "exploding bottle” cases, the presentation of evidence on the handling of a bottle that exploded will be a formal exercise substantially unrelated to the probability that a defect existed in the product when it left the manufacturer’s control.
I would remand to the trial judge for consideration of the facts in light of the correct legal standard set forth in Holloway, supra.