Apex Oil Company, Inc. v. Jones Stephens Corp.

881 F.3d 658
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 5, 2018
Docket16-3684
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 881 F.3d 658 (Apex Oil Company, Inc. v. Jones Stephens Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Apex Oil Company, Inc. v. Jones Stephens Corp., 881 F.3d 658 (8th Cir. 2018).

Opinion

COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

Apex Oil Company appeals a grant of summary judgment dismissing, several products liability claims that it brought against Jones Stephens Corporation. We agree with the district court 1 that there was insufficient evidence to support any of the theories that Apex advances on appeal, and we therefore affirm.

I.

Jones Stephens sold a PlumBest plumbing supply line to a builder or plumbing contractor, and it was installed in 2004 or 2005 at a building owned by Apex Oil Company in Humphrey, Arkansas. The supply line, which was connected to a toilet on the second floor of the building, consisted of a stainless steel braided hose with a plastic coupling nut on the end. A label affixed to the supply line included the following statement: “Leak proof seal—High quality outer braid of stainless steel and exclusive crimp on fittings for maximum performance.”

According to Apex’s evidence, on or about January 16, 2013, someone discovered a stream of water coming from the second floor bathroom of Apex’s building. The water caused damage to the building and to property inside. An investigation into the cause of the escaping water determined that a plastic coupling nut on the supply line failed after it fractured at the intersection of the base of the nut and the threaded walls. An expert witness retained by Apex averred that the plastic coupling nut was improperly manufactured because the plastic contained voids. The expert also opined that “the fact that voids could be formed during the manufacturing of plastic coupling nuts was well known in the industry prior to 2004.”

Apex sued Jones Stephens in the district court, alleging state-law claims based on strict liability, failure to warn, breach of implied warranty of merchantability, negligence, reckless negligence, deceptive trade practices, and warranty violations. The district court granted Jones Stephens’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the complaint.

II.

Apex appeals the district court’s dismissal of four claims: strict liability, negligence, negligent failure to warn, and deceptive trade practices. As a federal court with jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship, we apply the substantive law of Arkansas to this dispute, and we review the judgment de novo. See S & A Farms, Inc. v. Farms.com, Inc., 678 F.3d 949, 954 (8th Cir. 2012). Summary judgment is warranted where there is no genuine issue of material fact for trial and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).

A.

Apex argues that Jones Stephens is strictly liable because the “toilet supply line was unreasonably dangerous beyond the extent which would be contemplated by the ordinary and reasonable user.” Under Arkansas law, a supplier is strictly liable for damages if:

(1) The supplier is engaged in the business of manufacturing, assembling, selling, leasing, or otherwise distributing the product; (2) The product was supplied by him or her in a defective condition that rendered it unreasonably dangerous; and (3) The defective condition was a proximate cause of the harm to a person or to property.

Ark. Code Ann. § 16-116-101(a). The second element requires proof that the product was both “defective” and “unreasonably dangerous.” Purina Mills, Inc. v. Askins, 317 Ark. 58, 875 S.W.2d 843, 847 (Ark. 1994).

An “unreasonably dangerous” product is one that “is dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary and reasonable buyer, consumer, or user who acquires or uses the product.” Ark. Code Ann. § 16-116-202(7)(A). This definition assumes “the ordinary knowledge of the community or of similar buyers, users, or consumers as to [the product’s] characteristics, propensities, risks, dangers, and proper and improper uses.” Id. The knowledge also includes “any special knowledge, training, or experience possessed by the particular buyer, user, or consumer or which he or she was required to possess.” Id. Apex does not have any special knowledge, training, or experience in the use of plumbing supply lines, so the question here is whether the supply line was dangerous “beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary and reasonable buyer, consumer, or user.”

Arkansas law recognizes that a consumer with ordinary knowledge would contemplate that a product may be less effective than the supplier represents. Two leading cases are Berkeley Pump Co. v. Reed-Joseph Land Co., 279 Ark. 384, 653 S.W.2d 128 (Ark. 1983), and Purina Mills from 1994. In Berkeley Pump, the court concluded that an agricultural corporation would contemplate the possibility that irrigation pumps installed in its fields “might fail to produce an optimum volume of water on a sustained basis.” 653 S.W.2d at 133. The court thus rejected a strict liability claim against the manufacturer of the irrigation pumping equipment for damage to water-deprived crops, because an ordinary and reasonable consumer would contemplate the potential shortcomings of the pumps. Id. Similarly, in Purina Mills, the court ruled insufficient a strict liability claim brought by dairy farmers against an animal feed manufacturer based on deficient vitamin content in the feed. 875 S.W.2d at 845. The court reasoned that while a supply of “toxic” feed would be unreasonably dangerous, the “possibility that manufactured feed for livestock might not contain the nutritional constituents recited on its labels, or that such levels might be affected by time, weather, or methods of storage, would hardly be beyond the contemplation of the ordinary buyer.” Id. at 847.

Applying Arkansas law to this dispute, we conclude that Apex failed to present sufficient evidence that the danger of water escaping from the toilet supply line was beyond the contemplation of an ordinary and reasonable consumer. Even where a manufacturer purports to deliver a “leak proof seal,” an ordinary and reasonable consumer would anticipate the risk that water might escape at' some point from a home plumbing system that relies on plastic connections, especially after the product has aged several years. Typical consumers are aware that they must monitor their plumbing systems for water leakage. Supplying a plastic coupling nut that later fractures is more analogous to distributing pumping equipment that under-performs or to selling animal feed that manifests deficient vitamin content than to supplying toxic animal feed. Apex does not identify authority under Arkansas law that the sort of product failure at issue here should be deemed beyond the contemplation of an ordinary consumer. We therefore conclude that Apex did not present sufficient evidence that Jones Stephens’s product was unreasonably dangerous, and the district court properly dismissed the strict liability claim.

B.

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Bluebook (online)
881 F.3d 658, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/apex-oil-company-inc-v-jones-stephens-corp-ca8-2018.