Seller, Distributor Held Liable in Post Hole Digger Product Liability Case

The seller and distributor of a post hole digger were liable for an accident that cost a 16-year-old girl her arm, even though the device’s owner admitted removing the safety plate that would have shielded her from the mechanism, the New York state Court of Appeals ruled in early April.

The New York Law Journal reported the digger’s owner had removed its safety plate before the 2004 accident, but the court held that this did not modify it enough to absolve the seller and distributor of the discarded safety plate’s design flaws.

The device’s owner had used it for four years before removing its plastic safety shield. He said he did not replace the part, which cost about $40, because it would only get bent and torn off again. He also acknowledged that he often drove the digger’s auger deeper into the ground than the owner’s manual recommended, probably contributing to bending and other damage to the safety plate, according to the court.

On the day of the injury, the owner’s friend was using the device, and the friend’s stepdaughter was helping him. The digger’s rotating driveline snagged the girl’s coat and dragged her into the mechanism, severing her right arm above the elbow. All parties in the case agreed that the safety plate would have prevented the accident, had it been in place.

The justice who wrote the majority opinion said that, while those in a product’s distribution chain can use post-sale modifications as a defense for liability for injuries, it is not an absolute defense, and the manufacturer still must “use reasonable care in designing a product that is reasonably safe for all of its intended uses and foreseeable misuses.”

The dissenting justice said that the digger’s designer and distributor were ordered to compensate the victim because they had deeper pockets than the farmer who owned the device, and such “soak-the-rich fact-finding is commonplace in American tort law.”

The jury awarded the victim $8.8 million in damages, apportioning 35% percent to the distributor, 30% percent to the maker, 30% to the owner, 3% to the operator, and 2% percent to the retailer.