Wurster v. The Plastics Group, No. 17-2698 (8th Cir. 2019)
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After James Wurster suffered fatal burns when a gas can manufactured by TPG exploded as he was burning garbage on this farm, his wife filed suit against TPG. The jury rendered a take-nothing verdict under Iowa's comparative fault scheme and found TPG forty-five percent at fault for Mr. Wurster's death due to its failure to provide adequate warnings on the gas can and apportioning the balance of the fault to Mr. Wurster.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed and held that plaintiff's design defect claim was sufficiently presented to the jury; the district court did not err by instructing the jury on reasonable alternative design; and there was no prejudicial error in giving the assumption of risk instruction. The court also held that the district court did not err by granting judgment as a matter of law to TPG on the post-sale failure to warn claim because plaintiff presented insufficient evidence to show TPG had a post-sale duty to warn consumers of the danger posed by its W520 gas cans.
Court Description: Erickson, Author, with Loken and Melloy, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Products liability. In action alleging plaintiff's decedent was fatally injured as a result of a defect in defendant's gas can, the district court did not err in refusing to give plaintiff's proposed design defect instruction as, under Iowa law, the court may not instruct the jury on both negligence and strict liability; looking to the instructions as a whole, plaintiff's design defect claim was sufficiently presented to the jury; the court did not err in giving Iowa Civil Instruction 1000.4 on reasonable alternative design in conjunction with the instruction on design defect based on negligence as the instruction was necessary to provide the jury with the proper factors for conducting the risk-utility test required for design defect claims; no error in giving an assumption of risk instruction; the district court did not err in granting judgment as a matter of law for defendant on plaintiff's post-sale failure-to-warn claim as plaintiff failed to produce sufficient evidence to show defendant had a post-sale duty to warn consumers of the dangers posed by its gas can; without a direct relationship with the users of the gas can, defendant had no way of determining who purchased the cans and who should have been warned.
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