McCool v. Woodstream Corp.

187 F. Supp. 3d 1338, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 64738, 2016 WL 2892574
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Florida
DecidedMay 17, 2016
DocketCase No. 9:15-CV-80504-ROSENBERG/BRANNON
StatusPublished

This text of 187 F. Supp. 3d 1338 (McCool v. Woodstream Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McCool v. Woodstream Corp., 187 F. Supp. 3d 1338, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 64738, 2016 WL 2892574 (S.D. Fla. 2016).

Opinion

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

ROBIN L. ROSENBERG, ÚNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This cause is before the Court on Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment [DE 158]. The motion has been fully briefed and the Court heard oral argument on the motion on May 13,2016.

This motion raises the question of whether Plaintiff has mai'shalled enough evidence to be entitled to a trial by jury. The facts' and circumstances in this case involve a certain amount of mystery and confusion as to how and why the decedent in this case met her untimely death. Defendants are of the position that Plaintiffs evidence is speculative, vague, and void of any concrete evidence of a connection between Defendants’ manufactured product, a mosquito magnet, and the decedent’s demise. Plaintiff argues there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to try this case to a jury and, to the extent alternative explanations exist for the decedent’s cause of [1339]*1339death, it is Defendants—not Plaintiff—that are in the best position to know whether their products are capable of inflicting the injury at the heart of this case.

I. FACTS OF THE CASE

Many of the facts in this case are undisputed. The decedent in this case, Mrs. MeCool, was found face down in her pool. DE 158 at 6.1 She was found wearing her shoes and fully clothed. DE 194 at 3. There were no eye-witnesses as to how Mrs. MeCool ended up in her pool. DE 158 at 6. Detective Broehm was assigned to investigate Mrs. McGool’s death. See id. After Mrs. McCool’s body was examined, Detective Broehm. was informed that Mrs. McCool’s lungs did not contain an amount of water that is generally consistent with death by drowning. See DE 151-8 at 16-17. Detective Broehm therefore investigated the scene of Mrs. McCool’s death for alternative causes of death. See DE 194 at 1-2.

Initially thinking that Mrs. MeCool could have been struck by a golf ball (from a nearby golf course) Detective Broehm began to check under bushes in Mrs. McCool’s back yard for golf balls. See DE 151-8 at 47. Upon doing so, Detective Broehm began to feel dizzy. Id. at 48.2 He went to a different area in the MeCool back yard to recover. Id. at 65-66. Around this time, investigators noticed that inside the MeCool house there was discarded packaging pertaining to refueling cartridges for a machine called the “mosquito magnet”. Id. at 64-69. Near the packaging was a receipt, dated the morning of Mrs. McCool’s death, for the cartridges. Id. at 69-70. In light of the fact that the packaging for the. cartridges contained warning labels concerning the possibility an individual could lose the ability to breath, Detective Broehm decided to locate the mosquito magnet machine. See id. at 71-73. .

Upon discovering and kneeling by the mosquito magnet machine, Detective Broehm began to feel “even more pronounced than prior to when I was looking for the [golf ball]... I really felt dizzy at this time, and I did" not feel good.” Id. at 76. After reporting his symptoms to a fellow officer, Detective Broehm resolved to place his face “right up” to the machine. Id. at 77. Upon doing so, Detective Broehm reported the following:.

I immediately stopped breathing, and I started choking, and I got up, and I was trying to—I was trying to catch my breath, and the more that I tried' to breathe, the more I felt like I was just suffocating. My throat was just closed up, and I was trying to get away from it and I tried to—I was kind of like in a panic mode, and I just—I remember just stumbling and trying to get towards the house, you know, because I couldn’t breathe, and I felt like I needed to—I needed to take fresh air, so to speak, but to me, fresh air was in the house.because it was going to be away from this thing, and it just—It was pretty scary, and I remember I threw up, and again, I was concerned about, number one, throwing up and contaminating the crime scene, and number two, it was just a very nice home and I didn’t want to [1340]*1340throw up out on the patio. There was some nice carpeting and stuff out there, you know, and I just gathered myself until I was no longer regurgitating and slowly—At this point, I was standing next to the—I was standing right next to the sliding door, and at the point in time where I was no longer going to regurgitate and having gotten a little bit of my breath back, I went in the door, and I remember, just as quickly as I could, sitting down and throwing the couch to the—There was a couch there and just throwing the couch to one side and just sitting down on the couch and just sitting there and trying to gather myself.

Id. at 77-78. Another law enforcement officer, Sergeant Soule, observed Detective Broehm’s reaction:

•Q. Was there any point in time that Detective Broehm appeared ill or told you that he was feeling ill?
A. There was one, definitely one remarkable time where he was looking. I believe he at that time located the mosquito magnet and he was close to it, and I believe like as he was talking to me about that he immediately started like gagging and you know, stood up and staggered. You know, I recall seeing him doing that. I was extremely concerned that, you know, six hours prior to that somebody had deceased on the back patio and now he was experiencing symptoms that I had not seen anything like that before in any of my experience, somebody that quickly go from speaking normally to throwing up and dry heaving.

DE 174-5 at 55. A third law enforcement officer, Detective Cesark, was forced to protect Detective Broehm from falling into the pool in which Mrs. McCool died:

Q. When you—when you put in your report that Detective Broehm got violently ill, and by reading your report today about him becoming violently ill, does that refresh your memory as to what happened when he was staggering backwards?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. And you said you had to put your hand on him; is that right?
A. To stop him. Because he was getting close to the pool.
Q. And it was on his back?
A. Yes, he was walking backwards, and I stopped him.
Q. Okay. And he was walking backwards toward the pool?
A. Right.
Q. Okay. If you had not stopped him, do you think his motion would have carried him into the pool?
A. Yes. That’s why I stopped him.

DE 174-7 at 149-50 (objections omitted).

After Detective Broehm experienced the foregoing, paramedics were summoned. DE 194 at 5. Oxygen was administered to Detective Broehm. See id. at 2. Detective Broehm’s blood was tested for carbon monoxide. Id. Initially, at the scene, this test showed a higher than normal reading of 7%, followed by a subsequent reading of 4.4%. See id. After Detective Broehm was hospitalized, a blood test showed a carbon monoxide level in his blood of 1.1%, which represents a normal reading. See id. Carbon monoxide is a byproduct of the mosquito magnet’s internal combustion process. See id. at 7.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
187 F. Supp. 3d 1338, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 64738, 2016 WL 2892574, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mccool-v-woodstream-corp-flsd-2016.