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Boggs v. Lay3/8/2005
Chris Boggs left his home on his bike one afternoon to deliver newspapers. Chris rode down his driveway and out into the street between two stopped trucks and was hit by a tractor-trailer truck hauling soybean meal for the Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM). At the time he was injured, Chris was thirteen years old and living with his grandmother on East Holt Street in Mexico, Missouri. Holt Street runs east-west through a residential neighborhood, with houses lining both sides of the street. At the west end of Holt Street, near Chris's home, is a soybean-processing facility, owned and operated by defendant ADM. The facility was built in the early 1950's. ADM has operated the facility since 1985.
ADM processes soybeans into a variety of products, including meal and oil, at the Holt Street facility. Trucks filled with soybeans enter the facility via Holt Street, are weighed "full" at a scale located near the entrance to the facility, and then proceed further into the facility grounds to dump the beans into a "bean dump." The trucks then return to the scale, are weighed again "empty," and then exit the facility via Holt Street. As to the meal generated at the Holt Street facility, ADM hires trucks -- meal haulers -- to pick up the meal from the facility and then deliver it to ADM's customers. The meal haulers enter the facility from Holt Street, are weighed "empty" at the scale, and then proceed further into the facility to be loaded with meal. The meal haulers then return to the scale, are weighed "full," and then exit the facility via Holt Street. The City of Mexico has designated Holt Street as the only lawful route for trucks to enter and leave the ADM facility.
Access onto the ADM scale is controlled by a red-green light located on both sides of an office building next to the scale. The light is manually controlled by ADM's scale operator, and is designed to direct trucks on and off of the scale. If there is a green light, the truck may enter the scale; if there is a red light, the truck may not enter the scale. Historically, if unable to drive directly onto ADM's scale, the soybean truck drivers would queue up on Holt Street. The drivers typically would stop on the street, stay behind the wheel, perhaps setting their emergency brake, and wait until able to drive onto the scale and proceed with delivery of the soybeans. At other times, trucks would park on the street, and the drivers would exit their vehicles. Holt Street, as a typical residential street, is not particularly wide, measuring only twenty-nine feet wide. A standard trailer truck is eight feet wide. The street is not wide enough for vehicles to be parked on both sides of the street and still allow for two lanes of travel. As one resident testified, to pass the queued trucks, one must drive down the middle of the street.
While trucks filled with soybeans waited on Holt Street for entrance to the ADM facility, certain other trucks did not wait in line -- typically the meal haulers. ADM had instructed the drivers of the meal trucks to pass the queued soybean trucks and to drive down the wrong side of the street in order to enter the ADM facility as a "first-priority" trucker.
Testimony from residents showed that, at times, there could be up to thirty trucks lined up, bumper-to-bumper, all the way down Holt Street. Truck traffic on Holt Street varies by the season and by the price of soybeans, with increased traffic seen during harvest time and when the price of soybeans rose. But as ADM's plant manager, Mr. Stumpe, acknowledged, there could be a backup on Holt Street at other times of the year. Trucks queuing up on Holt Street while waiting to deliver soybeans to the ADM facility was a long-stand
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