Lanclos v. Rockwell Intern. Corp.

470 So. 2d 924, 1985 La. App. LEXIS 8848
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMay 15, 1985
Docket83-1116
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 470 So. 2d 924 (Lanclos v. Rockwell Intern. Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lanclos v. Rockwell Intern. Corp., 470 So. 2d 924, 1985 La. App. LEXIS 8848 (La. Ct. App. 1985).

Opinion

470 So.2d 924 (1985)

Oscar LANCLOS, Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL CORP., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 83-1116.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

May 15, 1985.
Rehearing Denied June 27, 1985.

*927 Bruce Gaudin, Opelousas, for plaintiff-appellant-appellee.

Guglielmo and Lopez, James Guglielmo, Opelousas, for intervenor-appellee.

Charles Boudreaux, Sr., Lafayette, for defendant-appellee-appellant.

Before DOMENGEAUX, GUIDRY and KNOLL, JJ.

KNOLL, Judge.

The plaintiff, Oscar Lanclos, and the intervenor, Indiana Lumberman's Mutual Insurance Company, the workman's compensation carrier for Mr. Lanclos's employer, Grand Coteau Woodworks, Inc., appeal a jury verdict rejecting Lanclos's strict products liability claim against Rockwell International Corporation (hereafter Rockwell) and its insurer, the Travelers Insurance Company (hereafter Travelers), for the loss of his four fingers and one-half of his thumb from his right hand while he was operating a Rockwell Heavy Duty Wood Shaper. Lanclos sued Rockwell, the manufacturer of the wood shaper, and its insurer, Travelers, alleging that the shaper was inherently dangerous, the cutting blades were not properly guarded, and the manufacturer failed to warn of the shaper's dangerous characteristics.

Indiana Mutual intervened seeking recovery from Rockwell and Travelers for all workman's compensation benefits it paid to Lanclos. The jury returned a general verdict rejecting Lanclos's claim against Rockwell and Travelers. Lanclos and Indiana Mutual assign as error the following:

1. The jury committed manifest error by failing to find: (a) that the Rockwell Heavy Duty Wood Shaper was defectively designed; (b) that the wood shaper did not meet industry standards; (c) that Rockwell breached its continuing duty to provide safety devices; (d) that Rockwell had a duty to warn of non-apparent dangers; (e) that Mr. Lanclos was free from fault in using the shaper; and (f) that Mr. Lanclos had not assumed the risk of operating the wood shaper.
2. The trial judge erred in instructing the jury concerning contributory negligence, comparative negligence, and assumption of the risk.

Lanclos further requests that we award and fix the amount of damages due him. The central issues presented are whether: (1) Rockwell had a duty to warn; (2) the wood shaper was defectively designed; and (3) Lanclos's fault is a bar to or operates as a reduction of his recovery. We reverse for the following reasons.

FACTS

Grand Coteau Woodworks is a milling corporation that builds custom-designed cabinets, floors, paneling, molding, doors and various other wood products. The wood shaper at issue is a versatile milling tool that Grand Coteau Woodworks purchased from a Rockwell distributor in 1970 or 1971. It is not disputed that Rockwell failed to warn or caution Grand Coteau Woodworks of the dangerous features of the wood shaper when it was designed and manufactured in 1967. The accident occurred at approximately 11:00 a.m. on December 12, 1980, while Lanclos was making *928 custom-built French doors on the Rockwell Heavy Duty Wood Shaper.

The wood shaper is electrically powered and capable of making a large variety of cuts in wood. The wood cuts are made by exposed circular cutting blades attached to a spindle located in the center of the rectangular shaper. The shaper blades rotate at approximately 10,000 r.p.m. (almost 90 m.p.h.). Wooden guide rails are placed on either side (left and right) of the blades, and are used as a backboard to firmly press the wood against so that a uniform pattern of cuts is made as the wood is passed through the cutting blades. In this particular case three blades had been stacked on the spindle to cut a pattern of multiple cuts in the narrow ends of the wood stock.

The day before the accident Lanclos straightened and cut the lumber that was to be used to construct the sixteen French doors on an electric saw. On the morning of the accident he and his helper, John Allen, ran the long pieces through the wood shaper with an automatic feeder. This automatic feeder is a mechanism not manufactured by Rockwell which was attached to the shaper; the automatic feeder permitted the wood to be carried through the shaper blades without having the operator manually hold the wood as it was passed along the guide rail through the shaper's cutting blades. The long eight-foot pieces of the French doors were shaped without trouble.

At the time of the accident Lanclos and his helper were shaping the thirty-two short components of the French doors, each 15¾ inches long by 4 1/8 inches wide with a thickness of ½ inch. When Lanclos first began this segment of the operation he had to abandon the use of the automatic feeder because the short pieces were not being uniformly fed through the shaping blades. Because cleanly patterned, uniform designs are essential to custom wood-working, Lanclos had to pass the wood through the shaper blades manually.

Lanclos was standing to the front right of the shaper. He would take the pieces of unshaped wood from a stack on the floor to the right of the shaper. With both hands, Lanclos would grasp each piece of wood at the rear corners, hold each piece on the shaper worktop firmly against the guide rails, and push the wood through the rapidly rotating cutting blades. His helper stood to the left side of the shaper and would pick up the shaped pieces of wood and stack them on the floor to the left of the shaper. Lanclos successfully repeated this process twelve times. On the return of his hand to pick up the next piece of wood to be shaped, Lanclos's right hand made contact with the shaper blades traumatically amputating his fingers and one-half of his thumb.

DUTY TO WARN

Lanclos contends that Rockwell knew the wood shaper was a dangerous instrument capable of causing severe injury, and therefore had a duty to adequately warn users about those hazards.

It is undisputed that there were no warnings or instructions affixed to the shaper.

A manufacturer must give warning of any danger inherent in its product's normal use which is not within the knowledge of any ordinary user. Chappuis v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 358 So.2d 926 (La. 1978); Hebert v. Brazzel, 403 So.2d 1242 (La.1981). In the present case we find the danger was open and obvious. The record provides sufficient basis for a reasonable trier-of-fact to conclude that Lanclos was aware of the obvious danger of having his hand contact the revolving shaping blades. Lanclos has failed to show any non-apparent hazard which would have required a written warning.

SHAPER DEFECT

Lanclos contends that the Rockwell Heavy Duty Shaper was an inherently dangerous and defective machine because the operator is not guarded from the cutting blades. He argues that Rockwell was aware of this design defect when the shaper was manufactured in 1967, and even *929 though it then had the engineering capability to guard the cutting heads, it nonetheless failed to provide a safety guard. Rockwell's defense is that the danger of the cutting blades are open and obvious, and further, because of the necessity in the shaping process to have the blades exposed to the wood, the shaper blades can not be completely guarded.

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Bluebook (online)
470 So. 2d 924, 1985 La. App. LEXIS 8848, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lanclos-v-rockwell-intern-corp-lactapp-1985.