Duncan, et al. v. American Greetings Corp., No. 13-1751 (8th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs, employees of OMLP, filed a negligence suit alleging that American Greetings' failure to properly label its electrical system and warn plaintiffs of the unique nature of its transformers caused Plaintiff Duncan's incorrect assumptions about the secondary transformer's voltage. The court concluded that American Greetings owed plaintiffs no duty to warn of the well-known hazard of approaching a charged transformer with improper equipment; because the nature of plaintiffs' work necessarily implicated these obvious hazards, American Greetings owed no duty to exercise ordinary care for plaintiffs' safety; and because plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that American Greetings owed them a duty, their negligence claims failed as a matter of law. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of American Greetings.
Court Description: Civil case - Torts. Under Arkansas law defendant owed no duty to plaintiffs, experienced electrical contractors, to warn them of the well-known hazards of approaching a charged electrical transformer with improper equipment; since the nature of the work necessarily implicated these obvious hazards, defendant owed no duty to exercise ordinary care for plaintiffs' safety.
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