## Facts

- Lennox Chelcher worked for Industrial Maintenance Corporation (IMC) at a Hess Oil Virgin Islands (HOVIC) facility, sandblasting the top hemisphere of a spherical propane tank.
- To reach the work area, Chelcher used a movable, cage-like suspended scaffold known as a “spider,” allegedly manufactured by Spider Staging Corporation (Spider).
- Chelcher had experience working on similar suspended scaffolds.
- On the day of the incident, the spider was misrigged by HOVIC and/or IMC so it did not hang plumb; it dragged along the tank as it rose.
- The misrigging caused the spider’s floor platform to tilt farther away from horizontal as it moved up the tank, placing Chelcher in an awkward working posture.
- Chelcher became fully aware the platform was tilted but still boarded the spider and continued sandblasting from the increasingly tilted platform for about five hours.
- Chelcher claimed he suffered permanently disabling lower-back injury from working in that uncomfortable position for an extended period.
- Chelcher and family members sued, asserting (among other theories) strict products liability/design defect and negligent failure to warn, including an argument that Spider should have placed a pictorial warning (a pictogram) on the scaffold.
- Plaintiffs settled with HOVIC and dismissed it, leaving Spider as the remaining defendant.
- Both sides moved for summary judgment; plaintiffs sought partial summary judgment, and Spider sought summary judgment on the claims against it.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs produced evidence creating a triable issue that the spider scaffold was in a defective condition when it left Spider’s control and that any defect caused Chelcher’s injury.
2. Whether plaintiffs produced evidence that Spider negligently failed to warn (including by not placing a pictogram on the scaffold) and that an inadequate warning was a proximate cause of Chelcher’s injury.
3. Whether Chelcher’s knowledge of the scaffold’s misrigged, tilted condition and his decision to continue working for hours defeated causation and/or established assumption of risk as a matter of law.
4. Whether loss-of-consortium claims were available to Chelcher’s spouse and minor children under Virgin Islands law incorporating the Restatement (Second) of Torts.

## Decision

- Plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment was denied.
- Spider’s motion for summary judgment was granted on the substantive liability theories against Spider, including strict products liability/design defect and negligent failure to warn.
- On strict liability, the court found plaintiffs did not present sufficient evidence that the scaffold was defective when it left Spider’s control; the hazardous tilt resulted from misrigging by others during use.
- On failure to warn, the court found plaintiffs did not show proximate cause; the theory that a pictogram would have changed events was speculative, especially given Chelcher’s actual awareness of the tilt and his choice to proceed.
- The court treated the third-party misrigging and Chelcher’s continued work despite the obvious tilt as more direct causes of the injury, supporting summary judgment for Spider.
- For loss of consortium, the court recognized a spouse’s derivative claim under Restatement (Second) of Torts § 693 but rejected minor children’s derivative consortium claims under § 707A; the children’s consortium claims were dismissed.

## Legal Principles

- Under Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A (as applied in the Virgin Islands), strict products liability requires evidence that the product was defective when it left the seller’s control and that the defect was a legal cause of the plaintiff’s injury.
- A manufacturer is not strictly liable for a dangerous condition created after sale by third-party misuse or improper setup when that condition, rather than a product defect at sale, caused the harm.
- Negligent failure-to-warn liability requires proof of causation; a plaintiff must show the absence or inadequacy of a warning probably changed the user’s conduct in a way that would have avoided the injury.
- Causation is not established by conjecture that an added warning (such as a pictogram) might have triggered a chain of events leading to safer conduct.
- Where the plaintiff knows of the hazard and voluntarily continues the activity, assumption of risk and intervening acts may defeat proximate cause.
- Under Virgin Islands law following the Restatement (Second) of Torts, a spouse may bring a derivative loss-of-consortium claim (§ 693), but minor children may not (§ 707A); any consortium claim depends on underlying tort liability.

## Conclusion

The district court entered summary judgment for Spider because plaintiffs did not provide evidence that the scaffold was defective when it left the manufacturer’s control, and they failed to show that any warning deficiency—such as the absence of a pictogram—was a proximate cause of Chelcher’s injury in light of third-party misrigging and Chelcher’s decision to keep working on an obviously tilted platform; the court also held that only the spouse, not the minor children, could assert a consortium claim under the Restatement framework applied in the Virgin Islands.


Chelcher v. Spider Staging Corp., 892 F. Supp. 710 (1995)