Yecny

Plaintiffs in consolidated actions against defendant appeal from judgments in defendant’s favor.

Questions Presented

(1) Alleged error in refusing and giving certain instructions, and (2) in admitting evidence of a certain experiment.

Record

The actions arose out of an explosion and fire at the Owens-Corning Fiberglas plant in Santa Clara, where all of the plaintiffs are employed. Defendant Eclipse is a manufacturer who supplied to Owens-Corning a device, known as a McKee vaporizer, used in the manufacture of insulation products at the Owens-Corning plant.

There were 38 witnesses who testified, and there were over 60 exhibits admitted. Plaintiffs’ theory was that the vaporizer furnished by defendant to Owens-Corning some four and a half years prior to the accident was defective and a proximate cause of the explosion and fire which injured plaintiffs, and that the defects “were brought about through the carelessness and negligence of defendant Eclipse in the manner in which it designed and selected its component parts, and in the manner in which the said defendant manufactured and sold the unit in question.”

As plaintiffs concede the sufficiency of the evidence…