Products Liability Law Reporter

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that summary judgment for a machine manufacturer was warranted where a worker failed to prove the machine was unreasonably dangerous under Arkansas law.

Jonathan Edwards, an employee of Entergy Arkansas, LLC, was part of a crew cleaning up storm debris using a digger derrick manufactured by Skylift, Inc. The machine had a boom that could be raised and rotated and featured an interlock system that prevented a user from operating the boom before deploying the machine’s stabilizing outriggers. In the machine’s operator manual, Skylift warned users not to operate the boom without deploying the outriggers. Moreover, Entergy provided employees with a training manual informing them of the need to do the same.

As Edwards was rigging a downed pole to the boom, another Entergy employee who was operating the digger derrick flipped the override switch and moved the boom without first deploying the outriggers. The machine tipped over onto Edwards, who was seriously injured. He sued Skylift, Inc., alleging the machine was defective and unreasonably dangerous. The trial court granted summary judgment for the defense, finding that the machine was not defective.

Affirming, the Eighth Circuit found that under Arkansas law, a product manufacturer or seller is strictly liable for damages where it supplies a product that is in a defective condition and unreasonably dangerous. Citing case law, the court added that a product is unreasonably dangerous if it is dangerous to an extent beyond which the ordinary or reasonable buyer, consumer, or user would contemplate. Where a plaintiff subjectively knows that the usage in question is dangerous, the court said, then this subjective knowledge—not the ordinary consumer—is the controlling standard.

Applying these principles, the court found that Edwards and the rest of the crew all knew that operating the machine without deploying the outriggers was dangerous. Nevertheless, Edwards’s coworker flipped the override switch before deploying the outriggers. Thus, the court held, the trial court’s conclusion that the machine was not dangerous beyond what was actually contemplated by its actual users was proper.

Citation: Edwards v. Skylift, Inc., 2022 WL 2674063 (8th Cir. July 12, 2022).