Moody v. Blanchard Place Apartments case brief

Moody v. Blanchard Place Apartments case brief summary
793 So. 2d 281 (La. Ct. App. 2001)

SYNOPSIS:
Plaintiff tenant sued defendants, apartments and management and insurer, for his personal injuries from a stove's electric shock. Defendants filed against third-party defendants, manufacturers, for indemnification. The First Judicial District Court for the Parish of Caddo, Louisiana, dismissed third-party defendants on summary judgment and ruled against defendants for $ 363,611, $ 20,000, and $ 20,000 respectively. Defendants appealed.

OVERVIEW: Plaintiff's apartment had a 10 year old electric range. He was cooking in a copper bottom pot on the stove, tried stirring with a metal spoon, and experienced an electric current so strong that it prevented his drawing away. When he finally disengaged from the stove, presumably when the circuit breaker tripped, he stumbled backwards and hit his head, neck, and back on the wall. Examination of the stove the day after revealed a small hole burned in its frame where a burned-in-two wire had been pinched between lid and burner box bottom. The stove was fixed, used in another apartment, and its parts later cannibalized. He sued. Defendants claimed the stove's metal grounding strap was never attached. Plaintiff won.

HOLDING:
-Given the lapse of time from purchase and that there was no written record of what happened to the stove after the shock, defendants failed to show it was defective under La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 9:2800.54, -.55, when it left third-party defendants.

ANALYSIS:
-Overly cost-conscious, electric tape-using defendant, under La. Civ. Code Ann. art. 2317.1, should have known the unreasonably dangerous condition.
-Plaintiff's hurt disc was eventually discovered.

RULES:
-Alterations and repairs, subsequent to the purchase of a product, alone are not an absolute bar to a finding of liability on the part of the manufacturer.
-Rather, the lapse of time, inadequate "accounting" for use between manufacture and accident and alterations and repairs by persons other than the manufacturer will tend to negate the inference of a defect existing at the time of manufacture.
-The burden of plaintiffs is to prove causation is by a preponderance of the evidence, which may be met either by direct or circumstantial evidence

OUTCOME: The judgment was affirmed.

---
Interested in learning how to get the top grades in your law school classes? Want to learn how to study smarter than your competition? Interested in transferring to a high ranked school?


-->