Justia U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Seven years after Plyler installed a Whirlpool microwave oven and eight hours after using that oven, a houseguest woke him because of a fire in the microwave. Firefighters extinguished the fire. Plyler claims that he injured his elbow and knee while he ran into and out of his house and that he experienced post-traumatic stress disorder. At trial on negligent recall and strict liability claims, a fire department investigator could not identify a specific cause of the fire. Plyler blamed the fire on a product defect that had led Whirlpool to recall microwaves in 2001. Whirlpool’s Director of Global Product Safety testified that the ovens posed a fire hazard only if they contained splattered food. uncleaned for an extended time, and were running at the time of the fire. After Whirlpool discovered that 1.8 million microwaves contained the defect, it issued a recall through the Consumer Product Safety Commission, mailed notices to owners who had submitted a product registration card, and released news announcements. Although the average recall leads to repair or replacement of 10 to 15 percent of affected units, Whirlpool repaired 75 percent of the recalled microwave. Plyler stated that he kept his microwave clean; that he never received notice; that he paid for it with a credit card; and that Whirlpool should have been able to contact him. The jury found in favor of Whirlpool. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting challenges to rulings that limited Plyler’s testimony to his observations and that allowed questions about the relationship between the fire and his divorce.View "Plyler v. Whirlpool Corp." on Justia Law

Mead Johnson, purchased a primary Commercial General Liability policy from National Union, with a limit of $2 million for liability for “personal and advertising injury” and an excess liability policy from Lexington, with a limit of $25 million. Mead’s main product, Enfamil infant formula, is sold worldwide. Mead’s competitor, PBM, sued Mead for false advertising and consumer fraud and Mead sued PBM for trade dress infringement. PBM claimed that Mead had falsely asserted that PBM’s generic formula lacked key fats that promote brain and eye development. The suit sought $500 million in damages for product disparagement, a tort that the policies cover as a form of “advertising injury.” Mead did not notify the insurers of the suit until December 2009, after the suit ended in the $13.5 million verdict against Mead. Mead wanted its insurers to pay that judgment, plus a $15 million settlement that it made to resolve the class action suit. The insurers obtained declaratory judgments that they were not required to pay. The Seventh Circuit reversed the summary judgment in favor of the insurers in the suit relating to the PBM litigation, but affirmed the judgment in favor of National Union in the suit arising from the class action against Mead. View "Nat'l Union Fire Ins. Co. v. Mead Johnson & Co., LLC" on Justia Law

Baugh suffered severe brain injury when the Cuprum ladder he was using to clean his gutters collapsed. In a suit, alleging defective design and negligence, there were no eyewitnesses, and, because of the injury, Baugh could not testify. Three months before trial, Cuprum informed plaintiff’s counsel that it intended to use an exemplar of the ladder at trial, built to the exact specifications of the ladder Baugh had been using. In a pretrial conference, the ladder was marked as an exhibit “for Demonstrative Purposes.” Plaintiff objected. Discovery had closed two years earlier, and the ladder had not been included in expert disclosures. The judge determined that since the ladder was being offered only as a demonstrative exhibit, plaintiff’s objections were irrelevant. Cuprum used the ladder during trial to argue that, contrary to plaintiff’s design defect theory, the ladder would not collapse under a normal load with all legs on the ground. Cuprum’s expert presented testimony and video in which he tested the ladder, including jumping on the ladder as if it were a pogo stick. Over plaintiff’s objection, the judge allowed the jury to inspect the ladder during deliberation. The jury returned a verdict for Cuprum. The Seventh Circuit reversed, finding that sending the ladder to the jury room was not harmless error. View "John Baugh v. Cuprum S.A. De C.V." on Justia Law

Weigle and Moore were experienced mechanics employed by Truckers 24‐Hour in Indianapolis; they undertook a job to rebuild the braking system on a semi‐truck trailer. The trailer somehow moved as both were working underneath it, causing the support stands to tip over and the trailer to come crashing down. The support stands were designed by SPX. In a suit against SPX, the mechanics alleged inadequate warnings and defective design under the Indiana Product Liability Act, Ind. Code 34‐20‐1‐1. The district court granted SPX summary judgment, finding that the warnings were adequate as a matter of law and that, as a result, the support stands were not defective under Indiana law. The Seventh Circuit affirmed as to the inadequate‐warnings claims, but vacated with respect to the defective‐design claims. A reasonable fact finder could determine that the SPX support stands were in a defective condition that was unreasonably dangerous. That the SPX support stands differ from most others on the market tends to show that their design is not contemplated by reasonable expected users. View "Weigle SPX Corp." on Justia Law

Stollings lost his index finger and portions of other fingers in a table saw accident and sued Ryobi, the saw’s manufacturer, alleging defective design because it failed to equip the saw with either a riving knife, a small blade that holds the wood cut open to prevent kickbacks, or braking technology that automatically stops the saw blade upon contact with human tissue. Stollings contends either feature would have prevented the accident. A jury returned a verdict in favor of Ryobi. The Seventh Circuit vacated, finding that the court erred in failing to stop Ryobi’s counsel from arguing that Stollings’s counsel brought the case as part of a joint venture with the inventor of an automatic braking technology to force saw manufacturers to license the technology, and in admitting hearsay evidence to support that improper argument. The court also erred in excluding the testimony of one of Stollings’s expert witnesses and in giving the jury a sole proximate cause instruction where Ryobi was not asserting a comparative fault defense or blaming a third party. View "Stollings v. Ryobi Techs., Inc." on Justia Law

Elliot, which provides construction and maintenance services, owns and leases bucket trucks. In 1996, Elliot entered into a lease with TECO, a manufacturer of such trucks, agreeing agreed to hold TECO harmless from liability arising from injuries resulting from use, operation, or transportation of the vehicle or its location or condition. In 2000, Large was injured while operating a truck, which his employer, Elliot, had leased from TECO. Large sued TECO. TECO’s successor in interest (Mobile) filed a third-party complaint against Elliot, seeking defense and indemnification pursuant to the lease. Mobile later settled with Large without Elliot’s participation, leaving the third-party complaint against Elliot as the only outstanding issue. After a change in Virginia law, Mobile again moved for summary judgment, which the district court granted, holding Elliot responsible to defend and indemnify Mobile. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting Elliot’s argument that a later invoice superseded the terms of the lease, eliminating Elliot’s duty to defend and indemnify except in the case that Elliot violated obligations under the invoice by failing to either adequately train Large in the use of the truck or to provide him with copies of the truck’s operation and maintenance manuals. View "Large v. Mobile Tool Int'l, Inc." on Justia Law

Ferraro suffered serious burns after falling asleep next to the power adapter of her newly purchased laptop computer. She filed a product liability suit, alleging a design defect that allowed the power adapter to overheat, that HP failed to include adequate warnings about the power adapter’s propensity to overheat, and that HP breached an implied warranty of merchantability. The district court granted HP summary judgment, reasoning that Ferraro would be unable to show that the adapter was “unreasonably dangerous,” as required for her design defect claim. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Illinois law provides two alternative methods of establishing unreasonable danger: the “consumer-expectations test” and the “risk-utility test.” Ferraro appealed with respect to the consumer expectations test, but, under Illinois law, the risk-utility test “trumps” in design defect cases if the two methods of establishing unreasonable dangerousness have conflicting results. The district court’s finding that Ferraro could not succeed under the risk-utility test furnished an independent, unchallenged ground for its decision. View "Ferraro v. Best Buy Stores, L.P." on Justia Law

From 1981 to 1989, Schultz worked painting equipment, floors, walls, ceilings, and pipes at AMC company plants. In 2005 he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). He died 2006. His wife sued paint companies, alleging that the companies produced or distributed the paint Schultz used at work and that benzene from the paints caused his disease. She offered reports from two experts: Stewart, an industrial hygienist, who reconstructed Schultz’s work with the paints to quantify his benzene exposure, and Gore, an oncologist, who testified that benzene is generally known to cause AML and specifically was a substantial factor in the development of Schultz’s disease. The district court granted the companies summary judgment on the ground that Gore’s testimony was scientifically unreliable; without that evidence, Schultz had no way of linking his disease to the paints. The Seventh Circuit reversed in part, holding that the district court erred in excluding Gore’s testimony. View "Schultz v. Glidden Co." on Justia Law

The underlying suits arise from alleged defects in Kenmore-brand Sears washing machines sold in periods beginning in 2001 and 2004. One asserted a defect that causes mold; the other asserted a defect that stops the machine inopportunely. The district court denied certification of the class complaining of mold and granted certification of the class complaining of sudden stoppage. The Seventh Circuit affirmed certification of the stoppage claims and reversed denial of certification for the mold claims. Rule 23(b)(3) conditions maintenance of a class action on a finding “that the questions of fact or law common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” The basic question in the litigation is: were the machines defective in permitting mold to accumulate and generate noxious odors? The question is common to the entire mold class, although the answer may vary with the differences in design. The individual questions are the amount of damages owed particular class members. It is more efficient for the question whether the washing machines were defective to be resolved in a single proceeding than for it to be litigated separately in hundreds of different trials View "Butler v. Sears, Roebuck & Co." on Justia Law

Industrial grease, propelled in a jet with enough energy to penetrate and pass through the human body like a bullet, hit and disabled a worker at a steel rolling mill. At trial the jury found that the accident was caused by a design defect in a heavy industrial product designed and manufactured by Xtek and installed in the mill. That equipment contained an internal spring that could exert over 10,000 pounds of force. The jury accepted the theory of plaintiffs’ expert witness, Dr. Hutter, that the spring was the culprit mechanism behind the accident and that an alternative design of a thrust plate in the equipment would have prevented the disabling accident. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The district court acted within its discretion in denying Daubert motion that sought to bar Dr. Hutter from offering his expert opinions, which were essential to the plaintiffs’ case. The purpose of the Daubert inquiry is to scrutinize proposed expert witness testimony to determine if it has “the same level of intellectual rigor that characterizes the practice of an expert in the relevant field” so as to be deemed reliable enough to present to a jury. View "Lapsley v. Xtek, Inc." on Justia Law