Perez v. Fidelity Container Corp.
Case Date: 06/30/1997
Court: 1st District Appellate
Docket No: 1-95-0375
June 30, 1997 No. 1-95-0375 FLORITO PEREZ and GLORIA PEREZ, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. FIDELITY CONTAINER CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee, and MEAD CORPORATION, Third-Party/ Defendant-Appellee.) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )Appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook County. No. 90 L 2771 Honorable Irwin J. Solganick, Judge Presiding. JUSTICE O'BRIEN delivered the opinion of the court: Plaintiffs, Florito and Gloria Perez, appeal from a directed verdict for defendant, Fidelity Container Corp., in a personal injury action alleging strict product liability and negligence. We affirm the directed verdict as to the product liability count and reverse and remand as to the negligence count. FACTS Plaintiff Florito Perez was employed by Edsal Manufacturing Company. Edsal manufactured steel shelving, storage cabinets and shop furniture on five production lines. The company used corrugated cardboard cartons for its product. Each of its production lines used a different sized carton. Edsal purchased its cardboard cartons from Fidelity, which designed and distributed packaging. The boxes were produced for Fidelity by third-party defendant, Mead, which manufactured them pursuant to Fidelity's instructions. Fidelity normally conveyed a customer's specific unitizing or baling requirements for packaging to Mead but did not instruct Mead on how to unitize bales intended for shipment to Edsal. Having received no instruction to the contrary, Mead baled Fidelity's cartons for Edsal in units of 250, banding the bales together with plastic straps. A 250-unit bale of collapsed cartons stood 45 inches tall and, depending on the cartons' dimensions, could weigh as much as 1,300 pounds. Mead shipped the 250-unit bales directly to Edsal on wooden pallets or skids. At Edsal, the skids of collapsed cartons were stacked and moved to and from the production line by forklifts. The bales were unbanded by Edsal employees at the production line so the cartons, along with their covers and inserts, could be formed, assembled, and packed. As workers pulled cartons off the unbanded stack one by one, the stack would shift and, over a period of time, become disheveled and unstable. At the end of each workday, stacks of unused cartons from opened bales were moved by forklift from the production lines back to the shipping area for storage. The stacks of loose cartons were then stored atop 5 |