Duty to Warn

Smith focused primarily on A-B’s argument that it had no duty to warn Westvaco of the dangers of using an unguarded foot switch on heavy machinery. It argued Pennsylvania law is clear that a manufacturer’s duty to warn is limited when that manufacturer supplies only a component of a finished product and the danger is associated with the finished product.



Smith said there is no clear state Supreme Court authority regarding the issue of a component part manufacturer’s duty to warn. The high court has addressed the issue twice, he said, but once was in a plurality decision and the other only addressed the issue in dicta.



Smith did look at one of those decisions in detail, however, as it contained a factual situation similar to Colegrove’s.



In Wenrick v. Schloemann-Siemag, 564 A.2d 1244 (Pa. 1989), the plaintiff’s decedent was killed when he was repairing an extrusion press. He was crushed when the hydraulic loader he was standing under retracted.



The plaintiff sued the manufacturer of the machine’s electrical control system, Cutler-Hammer, alleging that the switch that activated the loader was defective because it was unguarded and that Cutler-Hammer should have warned the manufacturer of the press of the danger of locating the switch near the machine’s steps.



The justices upheld the trial court’s decision to grant Cutler-Hammer a J. .O.V., reasoning that Cutler-Hammer had no control over or knowledge of the placement of the switch.



Smith said A-B read that decision as creating a general rule absolving a component party manufacturer of the duty to warn of the dangers of the finished product. But Smith said the justices’ decision did no such thing. In fact, it was decided narrowly, he said.



“The court’s decision did not turn on any general principle that applied to component part manufacturers like Cutler-Hammer,” Smith said. “Rather, Cutler-Hammer was not liable in Wenrick simply because the plaintiff had failed to make out her case.”



A-B’s position was not completely off base, however, because several courts have also referenced Wenrick as creating the same general rule A-B argued, Smith said. The state Supreme Court itself referenced the general principle in dicta in Jacobini v. V. & O. Press Co., 688 A.2d 476 (Pa. 1991), he said.



The federal courts have also cited the “Wenrick principle,” Smith said, and tried to predict its breadth. Cases such as Petrucelli v. Bohringer and Ratzinger, 46 F.3d 1298 (3d. Cir. 1995), J. Meade Williamson and F.D.I.B. v. Piper Aircraft Corp., 968 F.2d 380 (3d Cir. 1992), and Fleck v. KDI Sylvan Pools, 981 F.2d 107 (3d Cir. 1992), all speak about the principle.

Two Tests

Two tests developed from those cases: the obvious danger rule, holding that a component part manufacturer has no duty to warn when the danger is open and obvious; and a foreseeability analysis, which states that a component part manufacturer has a duty to warn if it can foresee that use of a product will create a danger.



Smith said strict liability actions against a component part manufacturer often implicate both tests. However, he said, that could be confusing. The best interpretation of Wanrick, Smith said, would lead to a limitation of the test to the foreseeability analysis, or at least to make it the primary inquiry.



“Foreseeability must be the crux of the Wenrick principle because this concept is present, implicitly or explicitly, in all the cases addressing a component part manufacturer’s duty to warn,” Smith said.



When Wenrick and the federal cases are considered together, Smith said, they “all show that under the best interpretation of Pennsylvania law, a component part manufacturer is relieved of its duty to warn only when the use to which its component was put was not foreseeable to the manufacturer.”



Smith then said he had to decide the level of generality at which to decide whether a use is foreseeable. He rejected A-B’s argument that the question should be whether the component manufacturer knew of the ultimate specific function for which the product would be used.



“While it may be impossible to determine a priori the exact level of generality at which foreseeability must be determined, foreseeable uses are not limited, as A-B would insist, to the specific end uses to which a product is put,” Smith said.



Smith said the rule had to be broader than that.



“In the case of a component part manufacturer, the critical inquiry is whether the manufacturer could foresee the use to which the component was put when incorporated into the finished product of another,” Smith said.



“Only if the component’s use was foreseeable does the manufacturer of that component have a duty to warn of dangers associated with the component.”



Smith then applied the principles he clarified to Colegrove’s case.



Because the nature of a switch is to turn something on and off, Smith said, A-B should have foreseen that its switch would be used for that function, and because it was a foot switch, A-B should have foreseen that it would be placed on the floor.



A-B also manufactured the switch specifically for use in plants and factories, where there is typically heavy equipment, so it should have foreseen the switch would be used in such a location, Smith said.



“It follows that A-B could foresee the use of its foot switch to activate heavy equipment on the floor of a manufacturing plant,” Smith said. “Because such a use was foreseeable, A-B had a duty to warn of the danger of using the unguarded version of its foot switch around potentially dangerous machinery, where the accidental activation of the switch could result in injury to someone, like Charles Colegrove.



“To say that A-B had no duty to warn Westvaco of this danger simply because A-B manufactured only a component party is to misinterpret Pennsylvania law.”

Heeding Presumption