Towner v. Grand Trunk Western Railroad

57 F. App'x 232
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJanuary 30, 2003
DocketNo. 01-1696
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 57 F. App'x 232 (Towner v. Grand Trunk Western Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Towner v. Grand Trunk Western Railroad, 57 F. App'x 232 (6th Cir. 2003).

Opinion

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge.

Third Party Plaintiff-Appellant Grand Trunk Western Railroad (“GTW”) appeals from the district court’s order granting summary judgment to the Third Party Defendants-Appellees Lakestates Workplace Solutions (“Lakestates”) and Steelcase, Inc. (“Steelcase”). At issue is whether there was sufficient evidence to deny summary judgment on GTW’s claims of negligence for failure to warn and of breach of implied warranty with respect to manufacturing defects. For the reasons that follow, we AFFIRM.

I.

Plaintiff Brenda Towner (“Plaintiff’), a clerical employee of GTW, filed her complaint against GTW pursuant to the Federal Employer’s Liability Act, 45 USC §§ 1-60, claiming that she was injured on the job when a chair on which she was sitting collapsed, thus causing her back injuries.

GTW filed a third party complaint against Lakestates, the seller of the chair, and Steelcase, the manufacturer of the chair, alleging negligence, breach of express and implied warranty and indemnification as to the collapse of the chair at issue.

Lakestates and Steelcase filed a motion for summary judgment that the district court granted; GTW’s subsequent motion for reconsideration was denied.

II.

Plaintiff, employed by GTW since 1976, was a clerical worker, which required her to sit at a desk, use a computer and printer, answer a telephone and use a fax machine. In 1997, Plaintiff was moved to GTW’s Troy, Michigan facility. Plaintiff is approximately 5'10" tall and weighs approximately 285 pounds.

On July 31, 1998. Plaintiff was sitting on a chair while at work when the chair broke. Plaintiff fell to the floor and sustained back injuries as a result. The chan-base remained upright, but the seat fell to the right side and forward. Plaintiff testified that she saw metal pieces of the chair on the floor after she fell. (J.A. at 490).

The chair is a Turnstone Springboard Chair Model # TS38001. GTW bought the chair, and eighty-five others, from Lakes-tates in April of 1997. The chair was available for use by GTW employees for three shifts per day, seven days per week.

Prior to GTW’s purchase of the chairs, in January of 1997, Appellee Lakestates discovered that pivot pins in Model # TS38001 were too short and were falling out, thus causing the seats to break. Lakestates issued a recall to its distributors to upgrade and replace the defective pivot pins. This recall would have included Plaintiffs chair. However, GTW was not notified of the recall by either Steel-case or Lakestates.

Three people besides Plaintiff saw the chair after the accident. First, Plaintiffs supervisor, Steve Redmond, examined the chair in order to fill out an accident report. He testified as follows:

... the seat portion of the chair is secured to the base by two metal pins. One of those pins had sheared and snapped — I believe it was the right side — causing the chair to pitch towards the right, and there was — at that time I thought it was permanently settled in that position.

(J.A. at 405-406).

A second GTW employee, Craig Sickles, testified to seeing the chair locked in an [234]*234office approximately one week after the accident. (J.A. at 426). He stated that the chair:

looked like it was broken off underneath .... Like you take a piece of metal and bend it over to the side and keep bending it back and forth, and it almost breaks but it’s not quite broken: that’s what it looked like.

(J.A. at 427).

The third GTW witness, who saw the chair one to three days after the accident, was union representative William Claspell. Claspell. having some lay experience in welding, testified:

I observed the chair, turned it over, looked at it. It was kind of laying half— it was kind of off to the side. And the thing that I — the only thing I remember of the chair is the weld was broke. The weld had not been deep penetration.
The only reason I say this is because I was showed how to weld. My brother and I run a business, so I’m familiar with penetration in a weld, what it looks like, and what a busted weld looks like. There was slag on the top of it, but it looked like the bar where the seam was — as the chair was like this, had a rugged edge where the weld has — -just like you laid something down and pulled it off like that, and left a little bead along the side; that’s the only thing I remember.

(J.A. at 315-16).

Plaintiffs supervisor, Steve Redmond, testified that the chair was taken out of circulation. Eventually the chair was discarded. It is undisputed that, besides the witnesses noted above, neither party inspected nor tested the actual chair after it collapsed.

Steelcase’s in-house expert. Carlon Snyder, investigated the accident and subsequently testified as an expert witness. Snyder testified that the recall for defective parts on the Turnstone chairs was due to the pivot pins being too short, not due to a problem with the pins shearing. (J.A. at 443, 461). He further testified that if both pivot pins had fallen out, the chair would have fallen vertically forward instead of to the side. (J.A. at 461-62). Moreover, Snyder testified that it would have been impossible for the seat to fall to the side in a vertical position if the pivot pins were involved. (J.A. at 462). However, if only one pivot pin fell out of the chair’s control mechanism, Synder stated that the seat was only capable of sliding horizontally backwards and the seat would have remained in place. (J.A. at 461).

Snyder also testified that “[a] chair with a pivot pin issue ... would have nothing— there would be no relevance to any welding issues whatsoever.” (J.A. at 462).

Aside from much speculation as to possible causes of the accident based on the witness testimony provided by Plaintiff, Mr. Claspell, Mr. Sickles and Mr. Redmond, the definitive testimony provided by Mr. Snyder is as follows:

There’s much talk or has been much talk about a potential recall situation, and I do not believe that the evidence supports a failure mode that would be indicative of the pivot pin recall issue.
Secondarily, I believe that based on the testimony and evidence presented in the depositions of various people, there is no indication or evidence that there was any manufacturing or design defect inherent in the chair when it left our control.
And I guess the third thing, there.was some focus on the weld, especially by Mr. Claspell. And without any physical inspection of that weld on my part, I [235]*235have no way of knowing whether the weld itself was in any way defective.

(J.A. at 436).

Again, it should be noted that no expert examined or tested the actual chair in question at any time, and no expert opinion was offered on behalf of GTW.

III.

This court reviews granting of summary judgment de novo. Mills v. River Terminal Ry. Co., 276 F.3d 222, 225 (6th Cir. 2002). We apply the same standard as the district court. Daddy’s Junky Music Stores v. Big Daddy’s Family Music Ctr., 109 F.3d 275, 280 (6th Cir.1997).

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57 F. App'x 232, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/towner-v-grand-trunk-western-railroad-ca6-2003.