“Presented with a photograph of that portion of his yard, Jerome circled the approximate spot where he slipped, and placed an X where his foot came in contact with the blade,” Judge Mary Jane Bowes wrote
HARRISBURG, Pa. – A Pennsylvania man whose foot was mangled underneath a push mower and underwent more than two dozen surgeries won’t be able to hold its maker and Lowe’s liable, even though it was sold without its operator’s manual.
Jerome McDonnell bought a floor model from a Lowe’s in Lancaster County and though it was no longer in its original packaging, there were warnings on the mower itself about using it on a decline, the state Superior Court ruled Monday.
The court’s decision affirmed a jury verdict in favor of MTD and Lowe’s. McDonnell had used the mower for three years before, on his last mow of 2018, he slipped going downhill, sending his foot under the back of it. He’d been mowing across a slope but had turned down it where his fence butted around a tree.
Instructions on the mower said to mow across slopes rather than up and down them and to not mow slopes greater than 15 degrees. The slope at issue was measured at 26.2 degrees by the defendants, though McDonnell disagreed with that figure and argued that the accident happened on flat ground.
McDonnell spent 88 days in the hospital, underwent 25 surgeries and incurred medical bills of about $650,000. His lawsuit alleged there were inadequate warnings and design defects, like an insufficient distance between the rear of the mower deck and the blade and the lack of a guard to keep feet from sliding under.
He’d only used instruction manuals on other lawn equipment for assembly and was asked if he read the warnings on the mower.
“Not in depth, no. I mean, I saw the pictures there,” McDonnell testified. “You can’t miss ‘danger, keep hands and feet away’ in the middle there, but it’s not like I sat down and said, oh, let me read this. You know, again, it’s a lawnmower. You start it. You cut the grass. Put it away.”
Only the defective-design claim remained when it came time for trial, which resulted in a verdict for the defendants. McDonnell’s appeal cited six alleged errors during the case, all of which were rejected by the Superior Court in an opinion by Judge Mary Jane Bowes.
“Mindful of the laws of physics invoked by Plaintiffs, it is plain that if Jerome had heeded Defendants’ warning and mowed across the slope and never down it, gravity would have caused him to slide away from the mower rather than towards and under it,” Bowes wrote.
“Thus, as the trial court properly indicated, Jerome’s injuries were caused not by the absence of an additional warning, but by his decision not to heed the on-product instruction that Defendants had already provided to refrain from mowing down slopes ‘precisely because of the unchangeable—and dangerous—reality of how the operator will inevitably interact with the mower when he slips down a hill.’”
