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Miller v. Rinker Boat Co.9/15/2004
ajority concludes that the trial court erred in doing so, but for the reasons that follow, I respectfully dissent.
In my judgment, this court's recent decision in Bates, 346 Ill. App. 3d 223, 803 N.E.2d 977, is both on point and supportive of the trial court's grant of summary judgment. The allegedly defective product at issue in Bates was a Wrangler front-end loader from which the decedent's employer had removed a roll bar. While operating the loader, decedent was killed in an accident that the parties agreed would not have occurred had the roll bar not been removed. Decedent's widow and estate (Bates) sued the loader's seller (Richland) under theories of negligence and strict products liability, alleging that the loader was dangerously defective in its design. The trial court dismissed the negligence counts and later granted summary judgment in favor of Richland on the products-liability counts. On appeal, this court affirmed.
In Bates, we first addressed a seller's duty to warn about a product, writing as follows:
"On pain of strict liability in tort, a seller must warn a buyer if (1) the product has dangerous propensities, (2) the seller has greater knowledge than the buyer of the risk of harm from those propensities, and (3) the seller knows, or should know, that unless the seller warns the buyer of that risk, the buyer will suffer harm. Sollami, 201 Ill. 2d at 7, 772 N.E.2d at 219; Woodill v. Parke Davis & Co., 79 Ill. 2d 26, 29, 402 N.E.2d 194, 196 (1980). Unequal knowledge of the risk is the sine qua non of a duty to warn. Sollami, 201 Ill. 2d at 7, 772 N.E.2d at 219. If, from an objective point of view, the danger would be apparent, or 'open and obvious,' to an ordinary person, the seller has no duty to warn of it. Sollami, 201 Ill. 2d at 7, 772 N.E.2d at 219." Bates, 346 Ill. App. 3d at 232-33, 803 N.E.2d at 985-86.
This court then rejected Bates' argument as to Richland's failure to warn, explaining as follows:
"Objectively, an ordinary person would know that without some sturdy intervening structure between the driver and the horsepower of that engine, the engine will prevail. Richland had no duty to warn consumers that if they drove the loader toward a guy wire hanging at chest level, without any protective structure between them and the guy wire, they could get hurt. Everyone already knew that, and the warning would have been pointless. See Smith v. American Motors Sales Corp., 215 Ill. App. 3d 951, 957, 576 N.E.2d 146, 151 (1991). Essentially, plaintiff asks us to impose on [the dealer] a duty to warn against an obvious danger. We decline to do so. See Sollami, 201 Ill. 2d at 7, 772 N.E.2d at 219." Bates, 346 Ill. App. 3d at 233, 803 N.E.2d at 986.
In my judgment, our reasoning in Bates fully applies to this case, only more strongly. The product at issue in this case--namely, the wet surface of a boat--could literally not be more simple. This is especially true when one compares it to a much more complicated mechanism like the front-end loader at issue in Bates. Yet, this court in Bates held that operating the loader without the roll bar was an obvious danger about which no warning was required; clearly, the same is true about the wet surface of a small boat out on the Mississippi River.
The majority's response to my characterization of the wet surface of the motor boat as "a simple product" is to change the focus of inquiry from the surface of the boat to the boat as a whole. This broader focus would be appropriate if (for instance) plaintiff's lawsuit were based on a claim that (1) the boat's motor malfunctioned due to improper design, or (2) the steering mechanism was faulty. However, when the claim--as he
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