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Bell v. T.R. Miller Mill Company2/4/2000
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the advance sheets of Southern Reporter. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Alabama Appellate Courts, 300 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama 36104-3741 ((334) 242-4621), of any typographical or other errors, in order that corrections may be made before the opinion is printed in Southern Reporter.
REL:02/04/2000JasminBellv.T.R.MillerCo.
The plaintiff Jasmin Bell filed this wrongful-death action based primarily upon the Alabama Extended Manufacturer's Liability Doctrine ("AEMLD"). The action arose out of an automobile accident that occurred in Barbour County. The plaintiff alleges that that accident occurred when the plaintiff's automobile hit a sagging telephone line. The plaintiff's child, Jasmarie Bell, was killed in the accident. The plaintiff alleges that the telephone line was caused to sag when a pole, which had been manufactured by the defendant T.R. Miller Mill Company, Inc. ("Miller"), broke.
The action originally included Bellsouth Telecommunications (the owner of the telephone pole) and other defendants, but this appeal involves only the plaintiff and the defendant Miller. Trial was commenced before a jury, but the court granted Miller's motion for a directed verdict at the close of the plaintiff's case. The plaintiff appeals from the resulting judgment for Miller.
The facts relevant to this appeal are as follows: On August 12, 1995, Jasmin Bell and her two children, Jasmarie and Jason, were traveling north on U.S. Highway 431 near Eufaula. Immediately before Bell passed the intersection of U.S. Highway 431 and Alabama Highway 131 (Bakerhill Highway), Jeffrey Bertelson stopped his van at the Beeline convenience store located at the southwest corner of that intersection. Bertelson parked his van on the crest of a hill by a fuel island and went inside the store. The van rolled down the store's sloping driveway, toward Highway 131; it crossed Highway 131 and struck a guy-wire attached to a telephone pole. The guy-wire on the telephone pole either was severed or broke loose from the pole, and the pole broke. When the pole broke, the telephone lines sagged down over Highway 431 to a level of approximately 9 1/2 feet above the road. A recreational vehicle (RV) traveling south on Highway 431 struck the lines, causing the lines to loop forward, upward, and over the RV (by a "jump rope effect"). After the lines cleared the RV, they dropped back down to a level of approximately one foot above the road. At this time, Bell's car, which was approaching the intersection, struck the low-lying lines. The lines lifted Bell's car into the air, and the car then came down on its back bumper and came to rest upside down in the highway. Jasmarie Bell was ejected from the car during the accident and died as a result.
Jasmin Bell, as the mother of Jasmarie, filed this action on January 9, 1996, in the Circuit Court of Barbour County. An amended complaint added Miller as a defendant. Against Miller she stated claims of negligent or wanton manufacturing and marketing of the telephone pole, alleging that, as a direct and proximate consequence of the negligence or wantonness, Miller's acts combined and concurred with the other defendants' acts to cause the wrongful death of Jasmarie Bell. Bell also based her wrongful-death claim against Miller on the AEMLD, alleging that the telephone pole had been defective and unreasonably dangerous and that as a result of its defective and unreasonably dangerous nature her daughter Jasmarie had been killed.
At the close of Bell's case, Miller filed a "Motion for a Directed Verdict at the Close of the Plaintiff's Case." Afte
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