Takeaway
In short, this case holds that a product's unexplained failure during ordinary use can itself support an inference of a pre-sale defect, and strict liability does not require the consumer to identify which seller in the distribution chain created that defect.
Karen Godfrey bought a vacuum-sealed, plastic-capped jar of Planters peanuts at K-Mart for Richard Welge. To claim a store promotion rebate, she used an Exacto knife to remove the label portion containing the bar code. The jar then sat on top of the refrigerator, except when Welge opened it once to take peanuts.
About two weeks after the purchase, Welge replaced the plastic lid after taking peanuts from the jar. He testified that he used only ordinary force, but the glass jar shattered and severely cut his hand. He sued K-Mart, the retailer; Planters, which filled and sealed the jar; and Brockway, the jar manufacturer, under Illinois products-liability law.
After discovery, the district court granted summary judgment for the defendants. It concluded that Welge had not adequately excluded possible causes of the breakage other than a manufacturing defect. Welge appealed.
Issue #1
Whether Welge presented sufficient circumstantial evidence for a jury to find that the jar was defective when it was sold.
Holding
Yes. The evidence, viewed in Welge's favor, permitted a reasonable jury to infer that the jar was defective before Godfrey bought it and therefore precluded summary judgment.
Reasoning
Welge's uncontradicted testimony was that the jar shattered when he used only the normal force required to snap its plastic lid into place. A nondefective glass jar does not ordinarily shatter from that routine action. Thus, even without expert testimony pinpointing the precise flaw, the accident itself supported an inference that the jar contained a defect.
The evidence also allowed a jury to find that no defect was introduced after purchase. Godfrey transported the jar home without incident, it was not dropped, bumped, or otherwise unusually stressed, and it remained on top of the refrigerator except for ordinary use. The law does not require a products-liability plaintiff to eliminate every remote or fanciful possibility, such as unexplained damage occurring while the jar was unattended.
Although traditional res ipsa loquitur does not strictly apply once a seller has relinquished possession of a product, its underlying evidentiary principle does apply. When an accident ordinarily would not occur without a product defect and the evidence reasonably indicates that the defect was not introduced after sale, the accident is circumstantial evidence that the product was defective when sold.
The parties' experts agreed that the jar had contained a defect, even though neither side could identify the initiating fracture or determine exactly when it arose. That uncertainty did not entitle the defendants to judgment as a matter of law. If post-sale damage was unlikely, a jury could infer that the defect arose while the jar was in the defendants' chain of distribution.
The district court's reliance on Erzrumly v. Dominick's Finer Foods was misplaced. In Erzrumly, the facts left open a substantial possibility that the bottle had simply been dropped after purchase. Here, by contrast, Welge's evidence supported a finding that ordinary handling, rather than post-sale mishandling, preceded the jar's collapse. The Seventh Circuit also noted that Erzrumly was difficult to reconcile with other Illinois container-defect cases.
Issue #2
Whether Godfrey's use of an Exacto knife to remove part of the label, or the jar's being left unattended, established misuse or an intervening cause as a matter of law.
Holding
No. On this record, neither circumstance defeated Welge's claim at the summary-judgment stage.
Reasoning
Removing a label with a knife or razor blade is commonplace and is not shown, on this record, to have damaged the jar. The defendants did not establish with the certainty required for summary judgment that this ordinary act was misuse or that it caused the defect.
K-Mart had permitted the Alka-Seltzer promotion that prompted Godfrey to remove the bar-code portion of the label as proof of purchase. A seller cannot invoke as a defense a form of use that it invited. Invited conduct is not misuse for purposes of defeating a products-liability claim.
Moreover, under comparative negligence, consumer misuse generally reduces damages rather than eliminating liability, unless it was the sole cause of the injury. The evidence did not establish that Godfrey's label removal was the sole cause of the shattering.
The fact that the jar sat unattended on top of a refrigerator did not require Welge to prove it was protected from every imaginable source of damage. Ordinary consumers need not lock away jars and cans to preserve a products-liability claim; the possibility of unexplained intervening damage was too speculative to require judgment for the defendants.
Issue #3
Whether Welge had to identify which defendant introduced the defect in order to establish liability against K-Mart or the other sellers in the distribution chain.
Holding
No. A seller subject to strict products liability is liable for selling a defective product even if an earlier supplier introduced the defect without the seller's fault.
Reasoning
If the jar was defective when K-Mart sold it to Godfrey, K-Mart could be strictly liable regardless of whether the defect originated with Brockway, Planters, or another earlier participant in the chain of distribution. Strict products liability places the risk of defective products on sellers rather than requiring an injured consumer to trace the precise source of the defect.
The same principle applies to Planters. Its liability would not turn on whether Brockway, rather than Planters itself, created the flaw. Evidence that K-Mart or Planters took care in handling jars may bear on how the defect arose, but it does not defeat liability if the product was defective at the time of sale.
The court noted that a carrier could theoretically have damaged the jar before retail sale, but that possibility had not been developed in the litigation and would not alter K-Mart's liability to the consumer if K-Mart sold a defective jar. Because Welge's proof supported the essential inference that the jar was defective when sold, he did not need to prove which defendant physically caused the flaw.