## Facts

- Sabino Hidalgo, Jr., an employee at a meat packing plant in Fort Morgan, Colorado, suffered severe arm injuries while cleaning a screw conveyor; the injury resulted in amputation.
- The screw conveyor was part of a larger rendering/conveyor system at the plant.
- Fagen, Inc. served as the contractor that constructed and integrated the conveyor system at the facility.
- KWS Manufacturing Co., Inc. supplied component parts used in the screw conveyor that were incorporated into the overall system.
- Hidalgo sued Fagen, KWS, and two individuals associated with Fagen (including an on-site supervisor and a corporate officer), asserting strict products liability, negligence, and warranty claims.
- The district court granted summary judgment for KWS and the individual defendants on all claims, and partial summary judgment for Fagen on strict liability and warranty claims.
- Hidalgo’s remaining negligence claims against Fagen were tried to a jury, which returned a defense verdict.

## Issues

1. Whether evidence created a genuine dispute that KWS’s component parts were defective, supporting strict products liability under Colorado law.
2. Whether Colorado strict products liability applies to a contractor’s construction/integration of a conveyor system treated as an improvement or fixture to real property.
3. Whether the district court erred under Batson in rejecting Hidalgo’s challenge to Fagen’s peremptory strike of a Hispanic venireperson and in not revisiting an earlier unobjected-to strike.
4. Whether evidentiary rulings or the handling of alleged jury tampering required a new trial.

## Decision

- The Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for KWS on strict liability because Hidalgo failed to show a defect in KWS’s component parts themselves, as opposed to the integrated system’s configuration.
- The court affirmed summary judgment for Fagen on strict liability because Fagen’s work was construction services resulting in a real-property improvement/fixture, not the sale of a product for strict liability purposes under Colorado law.
- The court rejected the Batson challenge, holding the proffered reasons for the strike (youth and gender) were race-neutral and that Hidalgo failed to prove purposeful ethnic discrimination; the court also found no duty to revisit an unobjected-to strike.
- The court found no reversible trial error in evidentiary rulings and no basis for relief based on the jury-tampering allegations.
- The judgment was affirmed in all respects.

## Legal Principles

- Colorado strict products liability requires proof that the product was in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous, that the defect existed when it left the defendant’s control, and that the defect caused the injury.
- A component-part manufacturer is not strictly liable where the alleged danger stems from the finished system’s design, assembly, installation, or guarding by others, absent evidence that the component parts themselves were defective.
- Under Colorado law, strict products liability generally does not apply to contractors providing construction services that result in improvements or fixtures to real property rather than placing a discrete product into the stream of commerce.
- In civil cases, Batson prohibits race-based peremptory strikes; once a facially race-neutral reason is credited by the trial court, appellate review is highly deferential absent a showing of pretext.
- A party’s failure to timely object to a peremptory strike limits later claims that the trial court should have raised the issue on its own.

## Conclusion

The Tenth Circuit upheld the defense judgment, concluding that Hidalgo lacked evidence of a defect in the component parts supplied by KWS, that Colorado strict liability did not extend to Fagen’s contractor work as a real-property improvement, and that asserted Batson, evidentiary, and jury-tampering claims did not justify reversal or a new trial.


Hidalgo v. Fagen, Inc., 206 F.3d 1013 (10th Cir. 2000)