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Blue v. Environmental Engineering12/31/2003
ot through a gate into a moving trash compactor was open and obvious. It was not asked whether the apparent risk outweighed the utility of the machine used, whether there were reasonable safety devices available to prevent the harm caused or whether defendant's duty to produce and implement a safer design was outweighed by the obvious nature of the danger. Since this interrogatory left open all of these other considerations, it did not present an ultimate question of fact nor did it determine the rights of the parties; it merely addressed one consideration of many that must be balanced in a product liability negligence claim. See Bruske v. Arnold, 44 Ill. 2d 132, 136, 254 N.E. 2d 453, 456 (1969) (Illinois Supreme Court found that a special interrogatory was properly refused in a contributory negligence case where it asked only if the plaintiff exercised due care and did not include the element of whether his own negligence contributed to his injuries); Ross v. Aryan International, Inc., 219 Ill. App. 3d 634, 651, 580 N.E. 2d 937, 947-48 (1991) (the trial court properly rejected the defendant's special interrogatory regarding the defendant's actual or constructive knowledge of a dangerous condition because, although its knowledge was a material fact that bore on the negligence element, it did not by itself address proximate cause or injury, two other essential elements of negligence).
Correspondingly, even if the focus were not on the formal sufficiency of the special interrogatory, the jury's answer thereto was not inconsistent with its general verdict. "Where the special interrogatory does not cover all of the issues submitted to the jury and a reasonable hypothesis exists to permit the general verdict to be construed consistently with the special interrogatory, they cannot be said to be absolutely irreconcilable and the special finding will not control." LaPook v. City of Chicago , 211 Ill. App. 3d 856, 865, 570 N.E. 2d 708, 713 (1991); Cohen v. Sager, 2 Ill. App. 3d 1018, 1020, 278 N.E. 2d 453, 456 (1971) (in order for the verdict to be inconsistent, the answer to the special interrogatory must exclude every reasonable hypothesis consistent with the general verdict).
This conclusion is consistent with the evidence presented in this case. There is little question here that plaintiff presented sufficient evidence to raise a risk-utility issue. This evidence included the testimony of Marvin Salzenstein, a consulting engineer, with a specialty in machine design and safety, who testified in plaintiff's case in chief. Salzenstein testified that the trash compactor was negligently designed because it should have incorporated one or more safety features which were available at the time Smyth bought the compactor: (1) "a sustained manual pressure control," so that the machine would automatically stop when the on button was released; (2) "an interlock guard over the point of operation," which would prevent reaching into the machine while the ram was in motion, and an automatic shut-off when the guard was opened; (3) eradication of the machine's continuous mode so that it would automatically stop after each cycle; or (4) an emergency stop device within the convenient reach of the operator. Salzenstein stated that the gate added to the compactor by Smyth did not operate as a sufficient guard because it did not prevent a person from reaching into the machine, and therefore, the machine was still unreasonably dangerous. Furthermore, plaintiff testified that the machine did not actually stop as it was supposed to when the gate was opened. Regarding the severity of the possible injury, Salzenstein stated that if the compactor had not been full at the time of the accident, plaintiff might have been pulled further in
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