## Facts

- Two-year-old Jonathan Horst played in his yard while his father, Michael Horst, operated a John Deere riding lawn mower.
- The mower included a “no-mow-in-reverse” safety feature that could be overridden by pressing a button.
- Michael overrode the feature and mowed in reverse with the blades engaged, running over Jonathan and amputating both feet.
- Jonathan and Kara Horst sued Deere & Co. alleging strict products liability (design defect) and negligence, claiming the reverse-override design made the mower unreasonably dangerous.
- Deere relied on the mower’s safety features and warnings, including warnings against mowing in reverse and operating near small children.
- Jonathan was a bystander (not a user or consumer of the mower), making the strict-liability standard for bystander injuries central to the dispute.

## Issues

1. Whether Wisconsin strict products liability law requires a distinct “bystander contemplation test” for determining whether a product is unreasonably dangerous to bystanders.
2. Whether a bystander’s strict-liability claim must be evaluated under the same consumer-contemplation test used for users/consumers.
3. Whether the trial court’s strict-liability jury instruction, using the consumer-contemplation standard with a bystander supplement, misstated Wisconsin law and required a new trial.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for Deere & Co.
- The court held that Wisconsin applies a single consumer-contemplation test to all strict products liability claims, including those brought by bystanders.
- The court rejected adoption of a separate bystander-contemplation standard.
- The court concluded the jury instruction accurately stated Wisconsin law; therefore, plaintiffs were not entitled to a new trial.
- The jury’s verdict finding no defect and attributing causal negligence to the parents remained in place.

## Legal Principles

- In Wisconsin, strict products liability “unreasonably dangerous” determinations are governed by the consumer-contemplation test derived from Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A.
- The consumer-contemplation test asks whether a product is dangerous beyond what an ordinary consumer would contemplate, with ordinary community knowledge of the product’s characteristics.
- Bystanders may recover in strict products liability only if the product is unreasonably dangerous under the ordinary consumer/user contemplation standard.
- A trial court does not err by instructing the jury that bystander strict-liability recovery depends on meeting the ordinary user/consumer standard, and refusal to submit a bystander-specific standard is proper where Wisconsin law does not recognize it.

## Conclusion

The court refused to create a bystander-specific strict-liability standard and reaffirmed that Wisconsin’s consumer-contemplation test controls all strict products liability claims, so the defense verdict for Deere stood and no new trial was warranted.


Horst v. Deere & Co., 769 N.W.2d 536 (Wis. 2009)