Product Liability

This products liability case involved an allegedly defective walk-behind lawnmower that had been manufactured by the defendant. The plaintiff had purchased the lawnmower as a floor model, which did not come with an owner’s manual. The lawnmower did feature a prominent on-product label, though, which warned users about mowing on sloped areas. The plaintiff failed to heed the warning, slipped while mowing a sloped portion of his backyard, and suffered a mangled left foot.

Plaintiff advanced claims of failure-to-warn and design defect. The former claim was dismissed at summary judgment; the latter returned a defense verdict at trial.  On appeal, the Superior Court upheld the result, but spent most of its opinion discussing the warnings claim.

In Pennsylvania, a plaintiff enjoys the benefit of a “heeding presumption” – a rebuttable presumption that, if an adequate warning has been provided, the plaintiff would have read and heeded it. (Some cases have held that the heeding presumption only applies in workplace asbestos cases.  McDonnell did not mention or apply that limitation.) The heeding presumption serves to help establish the “causation” element of a failure-to-warn claim, i.e. that a different warning would have prevented the incident.

The heeding presumption is rebuttable, though, upon evidence to the contrary. In McDonnell, the defendants pointed to the plaintiff’s own deposition testimony that he did not feel the need to track down a copy of the owner’s manual, or even spend time reading the on-product label.  That was sufficient, the Superior Court held, to rebut the heeding presumption, and require Plaintiff to present affirmative evidence that a different warning would have made a difference.  Plaintiff did not do so, and the Court found there was no basis to conclude that Plaintiff would have treated an alternative warning any differently than the current warnings he had ignored.

Because Plaintiff could not establish the causation element of his failure-to-warn claim, the Superior Court affirmed the entry of summary judgment on that issue.

Helpfully, the Court also re-affirmed the corollary heeding presumption in favor of product sellers: “Where the given warnings are sufficient to make a product safe for its intended use, a plaintiff cannot recover for injuries sustained as a result of his failure to heed them, for manufacturers and sellers are also entitled to a presumption that consumers will heed it.”

Ultimately, McDonnell is a good illustration of the shifting burdens that apply in a failure-to-warn claim.