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Garst v. General Motors Corporation

484 P.2d 47, 207 Kan. 2, 1971 Kan. LEXIS 360
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedApril 10, 1971
Docket45,893
StatusPublished
Cited by57 cases

This text of 484 P.2d 47 (Garst v. General Motors Corporation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Garst v. General Motors Corporation, 484 P.2d 47, 207 Kan. 2, 1971 Kan. LEXIS 360 (kan 1971).

Opinions

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Schroeder, J.:

This is a products liability case wherein the plaintiffs in the trial court won a verdict in the total sum of $118,401.54 for death and injuries caused by the operation of a 40-ton “Euclid” earth mover manufactured by General Motors Corporation.

The issue tried in the lower court, material to the appeal, is whether General Motors was guilty of negligence in designing the braking and steering systems on the “Euclid” earth mover.

The question on appeal is whether there is any substantial competent evidence to support the jury’s finding that General Motors was negligent in designing the braking and steering systems on the “Euclid” earth mover.

The law upon which the foregoing issue was tried in the lower court is given in instruction No. 8 as follows:

“A manufacturer has the duty to use reasonable care in the design of his products so that they will be reasonably safe for their intended use, including any emergencies of use which can reasonably be anticipated.
“A manufacturer is not, however, required to design products so that they [4]*4are foolproof or incapable of producing injury. Neither is he required to incorporate only features representing the ultimate in safety in his design.
“It is for the jury to determine from all the evidence in a case, whether or not a manufacturer used reasonable care under the circumstances then existing to design its product in such a way that it did not create an unreasonable risk of injury to the user or others, when used in a reasonably anticipated manner.”

General Motors’ challenge to this instruction in its motion for a new trial was overruled by the trial court, but the law stated in the first two paragraphs of the instruction is not challenged on appeal. The first two paragraphs of instruction No. 8, therefore, become the law of the case.

Negligent design was considered by this court in Winn v. Sampson Construction Co., 194 Kan. 136, 398 P. 2d 272.

The facts material to our review are not in dispute.

The vehicle involved in the accident is an earth-moving scraper, referred to also as the TS-24, or as the General Motors Euclid scraper, shown in the photograph.

The vehicle is of enormous proportions, being at the outer limits of size presently designed for earth-moving equipment. It measures 44 feet 3% inches long, is 11 feet 10 inches wide, is 11 feet 3K inches tall, and weighs approximately 40 tons empty. When filled to capacity with earth, it weighs approximately 80 tons. This vehicle will be referred to as the scraper.

The Cook Construction Company was engaged in the performance of the earth-moving contract at the Glen Elder Dam in the Missouri River Basin near Beloit, Kansas. Work on the project had started in December, 1964. By the time of the accident, May 17, 1965, excavation for the dam, referred to as the “core trench,” had been carried 40 feet below the ground level. Excavation was to go still farther down to firm shale to form the bottom or foundation of the dam. The excavation was already well below the ground water table, and as a consequence, the core trench, through which the scraper was required to travel in carrying on the excavation work, was a slurry of mud and water. On the day of the accident the mud was so deep that the scraper, traveling through it, would sink down to its front bumper. This was approximately 4 feet deep. Although the scraper was powered by two motors, one for the tractor unit and one for the trailer unit, at times the scraper would have to be pulled through the trench for loading.

To alleviate the water problem the Cofferdam Unwatering Com[6]*6pany, a subcontractor, undertook the job of “unwatering” the excavation. It did this by laying pipe in the excavation to permit the water to be pumped out. Three employees of the Cofferdam Unwatering Company were involved in the accident here in question.

[5]

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484 P.2d 47, 207 Kan. 2, 1971 Kan. LEXIS 360, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/garst-v-general-motors-corporation-kan-1971.