PHILADELPHIA – The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will apparently let stand a multimillion-dollar verdict against a company that did not own the rights to a product at the time a woman tripped over it and seriously fractured her ankle.
The court on Sept. 15 denied petitions for appeal from Checkers Industrial Products, which was hit with a $6 million verdict in 2022 for buying a line of cable protectors months after Dana Burnley fell over one, and Burnley, who wanted the company to be liable for the entire $18 million figure a Philadelphia jury reached.
Checkers purchased the Firefly product line from Industry Advanced Technologies in 2015, seven months after Burnley fell at a conference in a Philadelphia hotel. Burnley and her husband sued several companies over her injuries, and Checkers was the only defendant left at trial.
Though jurors had the option to assign a percentage of fault to any of the defendants – like the product’s maker and designer and the hotel that held the conference – they pinned all of the $18.1 million worth of blame on Checkers as the successor to IAT. The trial judge reduced that amount to around $6 million, leading both sides to appeal to the Superior Court.
A split court earlier this year affirmed everything, even the fact that trial judge Michele Hangley had jurors decide issues regarding whether a controversial part of successor law applied to Checkers instead of making that determination herself.
It was disputed whether IAT ceased to exist after the purchase by Checkers. If it no longer did, then Checkers could be determined to be its successor in liability, but Judge Mary Jane Bowes noted that IAT was still in business and able to be sued by the Burnleys, who scored settlements from two other companies involved in making the products.
“Checkers caused the Burnleys no harm and cannot be held accountable for their injuries,” she wrote in a dissenting opinion.
Burnley tripped in September 2014. In April 2015, Checkers purchased the Firefly line of cable protectors in an agreement that said IAT retained all existing liabilities, including some debt.
In September 2016, the lawsuit was filed. IAT was able to escape it on jurisdictional grounds, and it was revealed that misaligned parts affected about 50 protectors. IAT and FallLine, the manufacturer, knew of this before they shipped to FOH Productions the unit that caused Burnley’s injury.
Under the “product line exception,” a corporation can be liable for injuries caused by the company it buys. It has not been expressly adopted by the state Supreme Court and apparently won’t be in this case, though Bowes wrote that she hoped the high court would reject it “when the issue is properly presented.” She and another judge wrote that Checkers had not preserved that argument for appeal.
The exception was adopted by the Superior Court in 1981 after a few other states had done the same, though appellate courts in 22 states have rejected it, Bowes added.
“(T)he product line exception consigns accountability for a defective product upon an entity that did not create or otherwise contribute any risk of harm from the product, did not represent that the product was safe, did not solicit use of the product, and never had the ability to eliminate the risk by increasing the safety of the product,” she wrote.
