## Facts

- A dairy farm manager in Pennsylvania purchased an International Harvester Series 3300 skid-loader tractor for farm use.
- The tractor’s standard design included a roll-over protective structure and side screens (ROPS) intended to keep the operator within the seat area.
- Before delivery, the purchaser instructed the dealer to remove the ROPS, reportedly so the machine could fit through a low barn door; the machine was delivered without the device.
- James Hammond, an experienced employee/tenant farmer on the farm, used the skid loader to lift a manure conveyor so his teenage son could place support legs underneath.
- Hammond was pinned under the loader’s boom arm and killed.
- The manufacturer conceded the accident likely would not have occurred had the ROPS been installed.
- In a diversity products-liability action under Pennsylvania law, a jury found for the plaintiff on liability; the manufacturer appealed.

## Issues

1. Under Pennsylvania strict products-liability law, may a manufacturer be held liable when it delivers a product without a standard safety device removed at a knowledgeable purchaser’s pre-delivery request, and an employee is killed in an accident the device likely would have prevented?
2. Does a purchaser’s sophistication and instruction to remove a safety device bar strict-liability recovery as a matter of law?

## Decision

- The Third Circuit affirmed the judgment for the plaintiff.
- The court held the manufacturer could be found strictly liable for supplying the skid loader in a defective, unreasonably dangerous condition due to the absence of the standard safety device.
- The purchaser’s request and alleged knowledge of the risk did not, by itself, relieve the manufacturer of liability.

## Legal Principles

- Under Pennsylvania law applying Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A, strict liability focuses on the condition of the product as supplied, not on negligence-style evaluations of the purchaser’s conduct.
- A manufacturer may be liable where it markets and delivers a product lacking an integral, standard safety feature and the absence of that feature renders the product defective and unreasonably dangerous for its intended use.
- A sophisticated purchaser’s direction to remove a safety device does not automatically shift responsibility from the manufacturer or defeat strict-liability claims by injured users or employees.
- Defenses tied to user conduct (including assumption of risk) are limited and generally present fact questions rather than categorical bars when the claim is that the product was defective as delivered.
- A jury verdict on defect and causation will be sustained where the record supports that the missing standard safety feature likely would have prevented the injury and that the product was unreasonably dangerous in its delivered condition.

## Conclusion

The court upheld strict-liability recovery because the skid loader was delivered without a standard protective structure intended to prevent the fatal hazard, and the purchaser’s pre-delivery request to remove that safety device did not categorically eliminate the manufacturer’s responsibility for marketing a non-defective product under Pennsylvania law.


Hammond v. Int'l Harvester Co., 691 F.2d 646 (3d Cir. 1982)