Morrison Mahoney Of Counsel Richard L. Neumeier recently won in the Appeals Court which upheld summary judgment in the superior court in a wrongful death claim brought by the widow of the decedent.
The decedent was fatally asphyxiated while was working underneath his truck with the engine running when his clothing got caught in an exposed spinning “U-joint” that was part of the auxiliary power system he had installed in his dump truck. Plaintiff claimed that the manufacturer of the auxiliary system’s “power take-off”( PTO) could have foreseen the use of its PTO in this truck and thus had a duty to issue adequate warnings of the risks imposed by PTOs in unguarded systems. The Appeals Court held that the manufacturer of a non-defective component part (*who is not involved in the assembly of the finished product) has no duty to warn of risks posed by the assembled product. Summary judgment for Mack Trucks, Inc., which had manufactured another component part, was also affirmed. Pantantazis v. Mack Trucks, Inc. was discussed in front page article in the December 11, 2017 issue of the Mass. Lawyer’s Weekly.
