Facts
- Builders Cashway, Inc. operated a hardware store and lumberyard and sold a Schweiss Chicken Pluckers bi-fold door to the Wangsness family’s farming and ranching operation for a Quonset building.
- Builders Cashway also helped install the door; the door’s manufacturer was bankrupt and not a party to the suit.
- The door opened using a motor-driven rotating shaft and cable mechanism located near the lower left side of the door, with the cable wrap point visible during operation.
- The door was operated by a portable switch box attached by a cord and kept near the door rather than mounted at a fixed location.
- Fifteen-year-old Tanner Wangsness had watched the door operate many times and had opened it on prior occasions without injury.
- Tanner understood he needed to keep away from the door’s exposed moving parts; testimony at trial included opinions that a reasonable person would recognize the danger presented by the exposed rotating components.
- On August 4, 2003, while opening the door, Tanner’s left hand was caught in the moving shaft/cable area, and four fingers were amputated.
- Tanner sued Builders Cashway in strict products liability, alleging the door was defectively designed and lacked adequate warnings.
- Builders Cashway defended on the ground that the danger was obvious and that Tanner assumed the risk of injury from the exposed moving parts; it requested a special-verdict form on assumption of risk, but the court submitted a general verdict.
- The trial court instructed the jury on assumption of risk and also instructed that Tanner, as a minor, was held to the level of care reasonably expected of a 15-year-old child.
- The jury returned a verdict for Builders Cashway, and judgment was entered for the defense.
Issues
- Whether the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s defense verdict on Tanner’s strict products liability claims for design defect and failure to warn.
- Whether the trial court erred by instructing the jury on assumption of risk (including the minor-standard instruction), and whether those instructions may have misled the jury in a strict-liability case.
- Whether the trial court committed prejudicial error in its evidentiary rulings relating to defect, warnings, and causation.
Decision
- The Supreme Court of South Dakota affirmed the judgment for Builders Cashway.
- The court held that, viewing the record under the proper standard of review, the jury’s verdict was supported by evidence from which the jury could find no defect, no causal link, and/or that Tanner assumed the risk of the known danger.
- The court concluded the jury instructions, read as a whole, correctly stated South Dakota law on strict products liability and the assumption-of-risk defense, including the instruction addressing the standard of care for a 15-year-old.
- The court determined the challenged evidentiary rulings did not warrant reversal because they were within the circuit court’s discretion and Tanner failed to show prejudicial error affecting the outcome.
Legal Principles
- A strict products liability plaintiff must prove that the product was in a defective condition that was unreasonably dangerous when it left the defendant’s control and that the defect was a legal cause of the injury.
- A product may be found not unreasonably dangerous where the condition complained of is obvious to an ordinary user and the risk is apparent from observation of the product’s operation.
- Assumption of risk is a defense to strict products liability when the plaintiff knew of the specific danger, understood and appreciated it, and voluntarily exposed himself to it.
- When the injured person is a minor, the factfinder considers conduct against the level of care reasonably expected of a child of similar age (and related characteristics) under like circumstances.
- Appellate review of a jury verdict is deferential; the reviewing court does not reweigh evidence or judge credibility and will uphold the verdict if evidence supports it.
- Jury instructions are reviewed as a whole; reversal is proper only when an instruction misstates the law or likely misleads the jury to a party’s prejudice.
- Evidentiary rulings are reviewed for abuse of discretion, and error is not reversible without a showing of prejudice.
Conclusion
The South Dakota Supreme Court affirmed a defense verdict for Builders Cashway because the jury could reasonably reject Tanner Wangsness’s defect and warnings theories (or find lack of causation and assumed risk) based on the visible rotating mechanism and the evidence of Tanner’s familiarity with the door, and because the trial court’s assumption-of-risk and minor-standard instructions, along with its evidentiary rulings, did not amount to reversible error.