Products Liability Law Reporter

A federal district court held that summary judgment for the defendant-manufacturer of a tanning bed was warranted where a plaintiff failed to provide expert testimony on the issues of product design, foreseeability, or causation.

J&K Products & Services, Inc., manufactured several Sundash 232 and 332 model tanning beds, which were sold to Four Seasons Sales & Services, Inc., which, in turn, sold some of the tanning beds to Express Tan, Inc., in 2002. In 2015, Express Tan placed a Sundash tanning bed out of service after customers complained that the bed’s acrylic screen canopy lining had fallen down. Express Tan staff tightened a screw and placed the tanning bed back into service. Subsequently, in 2015, Stuart Hill used the tanning bed, and the acrylic screen collapsed on him.

Stuart filed suit against J&K Products, alleging defective design and manufacture of the tanning bed; Four Seasons Sales, for its role in selling, leasing, servicing, and warranting the tanning bed; and Express Tan, alleging negligence and premises liability. The plaintiff claimed that he suffered a shoulder injury after the acrylic screen collapsed on him while he was using the Sundash tanning bed. J&K moved for summary judgment, arguing that, among other things, the tanning bed is presumptively non-defective under Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §411.310.

Granting the motion, the trial court noted that in Kentucky, all products liability actions, regardless of the asserted legal theory, require proof that the product at issue is defective. Under §411.310, the court said, it is presumed until rebutted by a preponderance of the evidence that a product is not defective if the alleged damage occurred either more than five years after the date of sale to the first customer or more than eight years after the date of manufacture. Applying the statute to the plaintiff’s claims, the court found that its presumption applies here.

The court noted that although the plaintiff has attempted to rebut this presumption with his own opinion testimony that the defendant’s tanning bed is defective, the plaintiff has no expertise in tanning bed design or manufacture that would qualify him to offer such an opinion. The court also found that the plaintiff’s failure to retain an expert to inspect the tanning bed or offer an opinion regarding its design and manufacture would leave a jury to speculate on whether the acrylic screen had fallen due to defective design or manufacture. Thus, the court concluded, expert testimony is necessary here, as an ordinary person is not sufficiently familiar with principles of tanning bed design or manufacture to know whether a defect exists or whether the product’s instructions were faulty.

Finally, the court rejected the plaintiff’s argument that the incident is proof that the tanning bed was defective. Citing case law, the court found that a jury will not be allowed to speculate that a product was defective just because an unusual or unexplained event has occurred.

Citation: Hill v. Express Tan, Inc., 2019 WL 1757534 (W.D. Ky. Apr. 19, 2019).