Bush v. Seco Electric Co.

118 F.3d 519 (1997)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P was a temporary employee at Rumpke. Delivery trucks would drop cans into a deep pit, and a giant conveyor contraption would pick them up and deposit them in a hopper. Rumpke had hired SECO to install the wiring of the conveyor. The conveyor sometimes failed to gather all the aluminum cans. The proper way to do this was to go down into the pit, pick the cans up, dump them in big garbage bins, and haul the bins out. Safety protocol called for shutting off the conveyor with controls located outside the pit. A yellow safety guard was supposed to be fitted on the conveyor's mouth, making it impossible to feed cans into the conveyor. There was no emergency shut-off button in the pit. P began shoveling cans onto the conveyor while it was still running. The safety guard was not on. The conveyor snagged her clothes, and Bush lost her arm. P sued for negligence and product liability. D's co-defendant was Wymer Construction Company (Wymer), which had installed the conveyor. D moved for summary judgment under the acceptance rule. P claimed she fitted into a narrow 'humanitarian' exception. An exception applies if the condition was dangerously defective, inherently dangerous or imminently dangerous such that it created a risk of imminent personal injury'--but mere negligence would not suffice. P argued the absence of an emergency stop button in the pit itself constituted such a condition. The district court granted summary judgment. P appealed. Meanwhile, the Indiana Supreme Court recast the acceptance rule. In its explication of the 'imminent personal injury' exception where words like 'expectable,' 'reasonable,' and 'foreseeable,' (a 'Palsgraf-like foreseeability standard') is now part of the rule.