More On Michigan Case: “Who Knew Carbon Monoxide Kills”?
May 26, 2010
Walter Olson at Overlawyered links to a great piece by Daniel Fisher of Forbes. (I blogged on this earlier this week).
Fisher’s piece, “Who Knew That Carbon Monoxide Kills?”, concerns the lawsuit over the death of a Michigan man by carbon monoxide poisoning. The man, an experienced mechanic, died while repairing his car inside his closed garage while the engine idled. His family charges the muffler repair kit manufacturer with failing to warn about the dangers of repairing mufflers indoors.
The trial judge dismissed the case for reasons, Fisher notes, “that should be obvious to anyone born in the 20th Century.” Namely, running an engine inside a closed garage is dangerous!
The Court of Appeals majority, however, disagreed and has reinstated the case which will now go to trial.
Fisher summarizes key points from dissenting Judge Kirsten Frank Kelly’s strong opinion:
“The dissenting judge notes some terribly unreasonable assumptions behind the majority’s opinion. First: The muffler-repair kit didn’t kill the mechanic. The car he was working on did. So why should the manufacturer of the repair kit pay money to the family of a customer who died because of fumes emitted by another company’s product? Why not the manufacturer of the wrenches he used, or the garage door he mistakenly closed? (No mention in the record if they were sued.) If the deceased had done the work underwater, the dissenting judge muses, would the manufacturer be liable for a drowning death? And the majority also held the manufacturer to an unfair standard: Instead of requiring the plaintiffs to prove the risk of dying from running an automobile in an enclosed garage is not obvious, the judges reinstated the case because the defendants didn’t offer evidence it was obvious.”
It is now up to a Michigan jury to determine if common sense still exists in Michigan. But, as Fisher writes, this case “is a reminder of the risks associated with the ‘reasonable man,’ that all-seeing, all-knowing superhuman jurors are allowed to invoke when they get somebody — a manufacturer with insurance, usually — to pay for somebody else’s mistake.”