In Rose v. Highway Equipment Co., 2014 Mass. App. LEXIS 108 (Aug. 27, 2014), plaintiff sued the manufacturer of a broadcast spreader—a "sander" that mounts on a truck chassis in order to disperse abrasives like sand and salt onto road surfaces— in Massachusetts superior court after he severely injured his hand while oiling the spreader's chain. Plaintiff asserted claims for negligence and breach of the implied warranty of merchantability (the Massachusetts near-equivalent of strict liability), arguing the spreader was defectively designed.
Plaintiff alleged he was injured while reaching backward for the oil bottle when he suddenly felt a tug at his shirt sleeve and was unable to extricate himself from the spreader before his hand and forearm were pulled in. Defendant impeached this testimony and presented evidence plaintiff had been drinking beer all afternoon and fell into the spreader after losing his balance from a ladder on the side of the truck. On the negligence count, the jury found plaintiff was seventy-three percent responsible, which foreclosed recovery under the Massachusetts comparative negligence statute, Mass. Gen. L. c. 231, § 85. On the warranty claim, the jury found plaintiff's use of the spreader was unreasonable, barring recovery on that claim as well. Plaintiff appealed both the judge's decision to instruct the jury on the unreasonable use defense in the first place and the specifics of the judge's instruction.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed. The court first noted that while, unlike a negligence claim, a breach of warranty claim primarily concerns the nature of the product rather than the actions of the user, the "duty to act reasonably" is nonetheless always imposed on the user. Accordingly, under longstanding authority, "[w]hen a user unreasonably proceeds to use a product which he knows to be defective and dangerous, he violates that duty and relinquishes the protection of the law," and such conduct is a complete bar to warranty recovery. Here, the evidence was sufficient to support submitting this defense to the jury. Although plaintiff's boss had instructed him to stay away from the front of the spreader when oiling it, plaintiff admitted he had oiled it multiple times from both the front and back because he thought it would be easier. Plaintiff also admitted he saw the spreader's warning label and knew about its safety manual, but never read either, and understood that if he put his hand in the spreader he could get hurt. While there was conflicting testimony about the amount of alcohol plaintiff had consumed on the day of the accident, his decision to drink beer before oiling the spreader also supported the judge's decision to instruct the jury on unreasonable use.
Regarding the specifics of the judge's instruction, it followed a model jury instruction often used in superior court save for one phrase, by which the judge referred to "the implied warranty version in effect of the contributory negligence defense described earlier" to segue between describing the implied warranty claim and its unreasonable use defense. Plaintiff claimed this phrase improperly harmonized the absolute defense of warranty liability with the liability apportionment principles of comparative negligence. The appellate court disagreed, concluding that this language, read in context, was likely meant merely as an introductory signal to the jury, indicating that unreasonable use was an affirmative defense similar in its general nature to the comparative negligence defense that the judge had just explained in his negligence charge. Indeed, the jury was never instructed to weigh plaintiff's conduct in relation to defendant's on the warranty claim, and the judge underscored for the jury multiple times that the negligence and warranty claims were distinct.
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