Farmer v. Brannan Auto Parts, Inc.

498 S.E.2d 583, 231 Ga. App. 353, 98 Fulton County D. Rep. 1382, 1998 Ga. App. LEXIS 449
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedMarch 19, 1998
DocketA97A2113
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 498 S.E.2d 583 (Farmer v. Brannan Auto Parts, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Farmer v. Brannan Auto Parts, Inc., 498 S.E.2d 583, 231 Ga. App. 353, 98 Fulton County D. Rep. 1382, 1998 Ga. App. LEXIS 449 (Ga. Ct. App. 1998).

Opinions

Pope, Presiding Judge.

In this products liability case, plaintiffs Gerald and Paige Farmer sued defendant Brannan Auto Parts, Inc. d/b/a Lawrenceville Auto Parts to recover for injuries Gerald Farmer received in an explosion. The explosion occurred when Farmer attempted to repair a flat tire on his truck by welding a crack in the wheel’s metal rim with an acetylene blowtorch. The flat tire was still attached to the rim, and several months before this incident Farmer had inflated that tire with a can of “Snap Fix-a-Flat,” which injects a flammable pressurized gas and sealant. According to the complaint, the heat from the torch caused Fix-a-Flat remaining in the tire to explode. The Farmers alleged that Lawrenceville Auto Parts distributed this “dangerous” product to the retail store from which Gerald purchased the sealant without giving him adequate warning of its explosive properties.1 The trial court granted summary judgment to Lawrenceville Auto Parts. We affirm the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Lawrenceville Auto Parts, as well as the trial court’s decision not to strike three affidavits filed by the defendant.

1. Whether termed “negligent distribution” or “negligent failure to warn,” Farmer’s claim charges that Lawrenceville Auto Parts distributed a product without telling consumers the dangers of that product. Although a distributor has a duty to communicate to customers and users the dangers of a product, we hold that duty did not arise here because the manufacturer of Fix-a-Flat had already warned consumers of the particular danger at issue.

[354]*354In December 1991, one of the tires on Farmer’s pickup truck went flat. When inflating the tire with air did not solve the problem, Farmer purchased a can of Fix-a-Flat tire inflator from the “Highway 20 Store.” The evidence is undisputed that Farmer received a can of Fix-a-Flat and read a warning on the can, which informed him the substance was flammable; that it should not be used near heat or flame; and that it would remain flammable when transferred from the can into a tire. After reading the directions, Farmer sprayed the entire contents of the can into the flat tire on the date of purchase.

The tire continued to have a slow leak over the next few months, and Farmer added air to the tire four or five times. He believed that in doing so, he had replaced the inflator in the tire with air, as specified in the directions on the can. On March 23, 1992, after the tire had gone completely flat, Farmer inspected the tire and discovered a three-quarter-inch crack in the rim of the wheel. Farmer decided to repair the rim by welding it, without removing the wheel from the truck or separating the flattened tire from the rim. Shortly after Farmer touched the welding iron to the rim, the tire exploded, seriously injuring Farmer.

Farmer claims he did not understand that the substance would remain flammable “three and a half months” after he placed it in the tire and believed the Fix-a-Flat had dissipated by that time. The plaintiffs claim Lawrenceville Auto Parts had a duty to warn him of that danger. They point to the fact that, during 1991, a Lawrenceville Auto Parts vice-president learned that there had been “problems” with tire inflators such as Fix-a-Flat, including the fact that the propellant in some tire inflators mixed with air to form an explosive gas.

We agree with Farmer’s contention that the distributor “of a product which, to [its] actual or constructive knowledge, involves danger to users [has] a duty to give warning of such danger ... at the time of sale and delivery.” Beam v. Omark Indus., 143 Ga. App. 142, 145 (1) (b) (237 SE2d 607) (1977). See also Bishop v. Farhat, 227 Ga. App. 201, 206 (6) (489 SE2d 323) (1997). But Beam involved a situation in which the seller had separated from the product the manufacturer’s warnings and had given the buyer incorrect information about the safe use of the product. Beam, 143 Ga. App. at 145. Bishop, likewise, involved a situation in which the distributor knew of a potential allergic reaction to the product but failed to communicate any warning to consumers. Bishop, 227 Ga. App. at 206. These cases do not address the situation at hand, in which the distributor had knowledge of a danger but the manufacturer had already warned of such a danger.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines “flammable” to mean “capable of. being easily ignited and burned quickly.” Such a definition is consistent with the defendant’s officer’s understanding [355]*355of the dangers of Fix-a-Flat. In fact, Farmer himself knew from reading the label that the substance could explode if exposed to heat or flame. There is no evidence that Lawrenceville Auto Parts knew of a situation like Farmer’s, in which a consumer had used the product, refilled his tire with air numerous times over several months, and then suffered an explosive injury when he used an acetylene torch on the rim of a flattened tire. Additionally, no evidence in the record shows Lawrenceville Auto Parts knew or should have known the length of time the substance remained flammable or that the distributor knew or should have known consumers would misunderstand the manufacturer’s warning, which stated that the substance would remain flammable after users placed it in the tire.

“[W]hether a duty to warn exists depends upon foreseeability of the use in question, the type of danger involved, and the foreseeability of the user’s knowledge of the danger. [Cit.]” (Emphasis supplied.) Wilson Foods Corp. v. Turner, 218 Ga. App. 74, 75 (1) (460 SE2d 532) (1995). While this question is often for the jury, this Court has held on numerous occasions that where a product is sold to a particular group or profession, there is no duty to warn of risks generally known to that group or profession. See, e.g., Exxon Corp. v. Jones, 209 Ga. App. 373, 375 (433 SE2d 350) (1993). Similarly, in this case we find that Lawrenceville Auto Parts had no duty to communicate to users a danger already clearly listed on the product itself. Given the circumstances, we may hold as a matter of law that a reasonable distributor, given the same knowledge of danger and the same manufacturer’s warning, would not foresee that a user would not understand that danger.

The principle stated in Beam and Bishop must be confined to those situations in which evidence shows a distributor or seller is aware of a danger either not communicated by the manufacturer’s warning or substantively different from the dangers the manufacturer has included in a warning label. To hold otherwise would create a jury question in any case where the manufacturer has included a warning label on the product and the seller has read that warning and is aware of that danger.

While the dissent speaks of a distributor’s duty to inspect for defects, there is no evidence that Fix-a-Flat is otherwise “defective” as that term is used in the case on which the dissent relies, Sirmons v. Derst Baking Co., 221 Ga. App. 127, 128 (470 SE2d 515) (1996). There is certainly no precedent for holding Lawrenceville Auto Parts responsible under any theory of defective design. Compare Banks v. ICI Americas, 264 Ga. 732, 733 (1) (450 SE2d 671) (1994), holding manufacturers strictly liable for safe design of products under a risk-utility balancing test. As the Supreme Court noted in Banks, 264 Ga. at 733, except for design defects, even under a strict liability analy[356]

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Farmer v. Brannan Auto Parts, Inc.
498 S.E.2d 583 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1998)

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Bluebook (online)
498 S.E.2d 583, 231 Ga. App. 353, 98 Fulton County D. Rep. 1382, 1998 Ga. App. LEXIS 449, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/farmer-v-brannan-auto-parts-inc-gactapp-1998.