Farmhand, Inc. v. Brandies

327 So. 2d 76
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedFebruary 11, 1976
DocketY-4
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 327 So. 2d 76 (Farmhand, Inc. v. Brandies) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Farmhand, Inc. v. Brandies, 327 So. 2d 76 (Fla. Ct. App. 1976).

Opinion

327 So.2d 76 (1976)

FARMHAND, INC., a Delaware Corporation, Appellant,
v.
Gene S. BRANDIES, Jr. and Gene S. Brandies, Sr., Appellees.

No. Y-4.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

February 11, 1976.
Rehearing Denied February 18, 1976.

William M. Howell, of Howell, Kirby, Montgomery, D'Aiuto & Dean, Jacksonville, for appellant.

Hugh M. Davenport, of Smith, Davenport & Peek, Jacksonville, for appellees.

SMITH, Judge.

This case severely tests the doctrine that there is no actionable negligence in manufacturing, nor any implied warranty of general fitness in selling, a machine whose formidable dangers, negligently created, are open and obvious. Farmhand invokes that rule on this appeal from money judgments awarded appellees for personal injury sustained by Brandies, Jr.

Gene Brandies, an 18-year old farmboy, worked daily with a Farmhand Feedmaster model F81-C drop feeder at Carter's dairy. He knew well how it operates. Taking *77 power from a tractor, it receives, mixes and discharges feed by means of augers which rotate at high speed in cylindrical housings. Feed is thus received, propelled into a mixing tank, mixed and forced up to a drop point where it falls through a chute into a hopper welded to a discharge sleeve several feet long. A discharge auger rotates within that hopper and sleeve.

The hopper is box-shaped, 10 inches or so wide, about 20 inches long, and open at the top to receive falling feed. Just inches below the top of the hopper, the discharge auger whirls at 380 rpm to force feed through a hole in the hopper, cut round in the circumference of the auger, and thence through the discharge sleeve to its destination at a sack or trough several feet away. The hopper is waist high to an operator standing near the clutch handle which engages the discharge auger. To one standing in that position, the auger is exposed in the hopper; it is readily visible and, in operation, openly and obviously dangerous. Gene Brandies, who grew up on a farm, had "seen enough of it," in his words, to know that it was dangerous. He knew "not to put my hand in there."

One day, however, that is what he did. He and Carl Smith were sacking cornmeal for sows in the farrow barn. Smith was in the barn filling sacks with meal which flowed from the discharge sleeve. Brandies stood outside, his back to the Feedmaster. With his right hand on the clutch handle he regulated the flow of cornmeal as the sacks were filled by Smith; with his left he steadied the shanking discharge assembly. His left hand dropped into the hopper. In a split second, the whirling blade of the auger pulled his fingers, then his hand and forearm through the pinch point at the end of the hopper and tightly into the discharge sleeve. The auger mangled Brandies' hand before Smith could run out of the barn and throw the clutch handle.

The Brandies claims against Farmhand, predicated on the absence of a simple guard plate which could have partially closed the hopper and deflected a hand being drawn to the pinch point, were submitted to a jury on counts of negligence and implied warranty of merchantability. The trial judge eliminated a count predicated on § 402A, Restatement (Second) of Torts.[1] Farmhand appeals judgments entered on substantial verdicts for the plaintiffs, who cross-assign error in the trial court's dismissal of their count based on Restatement § 402A.

Farmhand urges that, on the evidence and under the court's charge, the jury could not properly have found that "the specific danger to be avoided" was not "obvious to all," nor that "the particular dangerous condition" was not "open and obvious" to one exercising reasonable care for his safety, nor that "the alleged defect" was not "discoverable by simple observation," nor that "the alleged danger" was not "an open and obvious condition." The court's charge on the critical question was:

"The manufacturer of a product has a duty to use reasonable care. Thus if a manufacturer of a chattel makes a machine or design which causes it to be dangerous for the uses for which it is manufactured, he is subject to liability to others whom he should expect to use the chattel lawfully or be in the vicinity of its probable use for bodily harm caused by defendant's failure, if any, to exercise *78 reasonable care in the adoption of a safe plan or design.
"In order to recover damages for alleged negligent design of a product, the article sold must be dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer who purchases it with the ordinary knowledge in the community as to its characteristics.
"It is not in itself a breach of duty to supply a product which is reasonably safe ... [as] customarily used even though it might conceivably be made more safe. Nor must a manufacturer make his product more safe when the specific danger to be avoided is obvious to all.
"You are further instructed with regard to the plaintiff's claim of alleged inadequate warning that notice of warning is not required where the particular dangerous condition is open and obvious to the person who is exercising reasonable care for his own safety. One who fails to pay any attention to what he is doing is not relieved of his duty to exercise due care for his own safety under the circumstances. The manufacture and sale of a product creates ... [by] operation of the law an implied warranty by the manufacturer that the product is reasonably safe for the uses for which it is manufactured and sold.
"If the product is defective in design or manufacture so as to render it dangerous or unfit for its intended use, the manufacturer may be liable for bodily harm to persons who would reasonably be expected to use the product where such harm is ... proximate[ly] cause[d] by the defective design or manufacture while the product is being properly put to its intended use.
"If the alleged defect is discoverable by simple observation then the law will imply no warranty against the existence. There can be no liability on the part of the manufacturer of a product for injuries sustained by a person who was aware of the operating characteristics of a machine or where the alleged danger was an open and obvious condition or where the plaintiff had actual knowledge or in the exercise of reasonable care, should have had knowledge of the alleged dangerous condition." (Emphasis added.)

The concepts expressed in the trial court's charge are those which Florida appellate courts have melded, beginning with Matthews v. Lawnlite Co., 88 So.2d 299, 301 (Fla. 1956), into a practically indivisible concept of liability involving both negligence and implied warranty. The Supreme Court stated in Matthews:

"An implied warranty does not protect against hazards apparent to the plaintiff... . It does not protect against injury imposed while carelessly using a dangerous mechanism." 88 So.2d at 301.

While the Court expressed itself as approving the Restatement of Torts § 398 formulation that a manufacturer is responsible to a foreseeably injured person for failing to use "reasonable care in the adoption of a safe plan or design," the Court inverted the Restatement's apparent purpose to make knowing use of a dangerous machine a matter of affirmative defense.[2] Although the Matthews

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Bluebook (online)
327 So. 2d 76, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/farmhand-inc-v-brandies-fladistctapp-1976.