Consumer Sustains Lacerations From Defective Packaging
Case Summary: Plaintiff ordered a sickle from an e-commerce retailer. The sickle was delivered in a corrugated box. Plaintiff opened the box and removed the sickle by gripping its bare handle. The sickle’s blade was wrapped in layers of plastic. While unwrapping the blade, Plaintiff sustained lacerations to nerves and tendons in two fingers, which required surgery. A personal injury suit was brought against the manufacturer and against the retailer. The counts were strict liability, negligence, and failure to warn. Plaintiff called upon an expert with backgrounds in packaging, parcel delivery, and warnings.
Expert Analysis: Sickles from the manufacturer were shipped to the retailer’s order fulfillment center, boxed in bulk, without any individual packaging. Plastic wrapping was applied to the at-issue sickle at the order fulfillment center. The wrapped sickle was then placed into a box, with crumpled paper as space filler. There is a difference in the risk of injury faced by an order fulfillment worker compared to the risk of injury faced by a consumer. It is less risky to wrap the sickle than to unwrap it. The worker who wraps begins with visual awareness of the blade’s location; the consumer who unwraps does so without such visual awareness.
Plastic wrapping is unfit packaging for a sickle. The blade can slice through the wrapping, leaving areas of exposure that might not be perceived during the unwrapping process. Damage to the wrapping is likely and foreseeable, made more so by parcel delivery. It is known throughout the shipping industry that parcel delivery exposes a package, e.g., box, to multiple handlings, vibrations along conveyor belts, and drops down chutes. Contents can be tossed around inside the box, unless prevented from doing so by adequate restraints. Crumpled paper can’t hold a sickle immobile, allowing movement of the blade against the wrapping.
The e-commerce retailer’s website offers a sweeping variety of products, including bladed items. Some of them are shown in state-of-the-art packaging, like what is seen in brick-and-mortar stores. The e-commerce retailer knew, or should have known, that the sickle constituted an unreasonably dangerous product as packaged and shipped, because the danger exceeded what would be reasonably contemplated by a consumer.
In addition to the unpackaged sickles that the manufacturer supplies to the e-commerce retailer, the manufacturer supplies commercially-packaged sickles to various manufacturers and distributors that, in turn, market them under various brand names. The e-commerce retailer should have required that the manufacturer supply it with commercially-packaged sickles. The e-commerce retailer has vendor policies, under which such a requirement could have been issued.
A warning is a communication that is meant to affect user behavior regarding what to do, or what not to do, to avoid negative consequences posed by a non-obvious hazard. Although sharpness is an obvious and desired characteristic of a sickle, the packaging’s inadequacy was not obvious. Plaintiff was not warned of the hazard posed by the packaging, nor were instructions given regarding safe handling and unwrapping.
Conclusion: The direct and proximate cause of Plaintiff’s injury was defective packaging, which resulted in an unreasonably dangerous product, compounded by a failure to warn. Alternative packaging methods that provide transparent encasement of the blade and that allow safe and convenient opening, were not only technologically and economically feasible, but were also known to the e-commerce retailer and to the manufacturer.
Plaintiff’s actions were reasonable and foreseeable. There was no practical way for Plaintiff to remove the plastic wrapping from the sickle without placing hand and fingers in proximity to the blade.
Result: Case settled.
