## Facts

- A 2-year-9-month-old child suffered a traumatic amputation of his right leg after becoming entangled in a grain auger located in his grandfather’s farmyard.
- The auger was a Kewanee Model 260, purchased new in 1967; the accident occurred in November 1972.
- The intake hopper was surrounded by a vertical bar guard with openings of approximately 4 5/8 inches.
- Kewanee’s design engineer selected the bar spacing by checking that his own size 12 shoe would not fit through and did not consider child bystanders in setting the spacing.
- No one witnessed the accident; the evidence permitted an inference that the child could have tripped or fallen into the hopper area rather than intentionally interacting with the machine.
- Plaintiff’s expert opined the guard design was unreasonably dangerous because it allowed a child’s leg (and smaller feet) to pass through and reach rotating components, and that safer, feasible alternative guards were available when manufactured.

## Issues

1. Whether injury to a small child bystander from the auger’s guard design was reasonably foreseeable such that the manufacturer owed a duty and could be liable under negligence and strict products liability.
2. Whether the evidence of defective, unreasonably dangerous design and proximate causation was sufficient to support the jury’s findings, or whether the case should have been decided for the manufacturer as a matter of law.
3. Whether prior Illinois foreseeability limits on liability for child injuries involving farm machinery required reversal, or whether the circumstances supported submitting foreseeability and defectiveness to the jury.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the judgment for the plaintiff.
- The court held the jury could reasonably find the injury was foreseeable and the guard design unreasonably dangerous.
- The court concluded foreseeability, defectiveness, and proximate cause were properly treated as factual questions on this record.
- The plaintiff’s $75,000 verdict based on both negligence and strict liability (as reflected in special interrogatories) was allowed to stand.

## Legal Principles

- Foreseeability in product-injury cases is assessed objectively and is not confined to the manufacturer’s subjective contemplation or to the precise manner in which the injury occurred.
- A manufacturer’s potential liability extends to reasonably foreseeable users and bystanders, including children, when exposure to the product’s risk is reasonably anticipated in its setting of use.
- Whether a design is defective and unreasonably dangerous is ordinarily for the jury when evidence supports competing inferences about risk, utility, and the feasibility of safer alternatives.
- Foreseeability and proximate cause are generally jury questions and may be decided as a matter of law only when no reasonable fact-finder could find for the plaintiff.
- Evidence that a guarding design permits contact with moving parts for a broad class of persons and that safer feasible designs existed supports submission of defect and foreseeability to the jury.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a jury verdict for a child injured by a grain auger, holding that the manufacturer could reasonably be found liable in negligence and strict liability because injury to bystanders, including children, was foreseeable and the adequacy of the guard design and causation were questions for the jury.


Richelman v. Kewanee Machinery & Conveyor Co., 375 N.E.2d 885 (Ill. App. Ct. 1978)