Simpson Timber Co. And Grace Line, Inc. v. Ezra Parks, Simpson Timber Co. v. Grace Line, Inc.

A longshoreman stowing cargo was injured when he stepped through the packaging on a bundle of doors. The Simpson Timber Company manufactured the doors. In filling an order for an exporter it was required to package the doors for shipment overseas. The doors were cut to leave openings for glass. The manufacturer packaged the doors in a stack forty-two inches high, with the window openings aligned so that a well was formed. A cardboard cover was wrapped around the center of the stack leaving the solid edges of the doors exposed but concealing the interior cavity. The cardboard-bound stack was then bound with two steel straps and wooden chocks fastened along one side to permit the stack to be handled by a forklift tractor. The completed bundle appeared to consist of solid wooden doors wrapped in a protective cardboard cover. When the bundle rested on its chocks the concealed well created by the window openings extended vertically through the package from top to bottom. The manufacturer gave no warning that the cardboard cover concealed a well, by notice on the package or otherwise. Printing on the package identified the contents as “fine doors,” and stated that the cardboard cover…

with whom Judges HAMLEY, MERRILL, and DUNIWAY concur

(dissenting):

The majority holds that a manufacturer is required to guard against only those risks which it actually knows. The more limited the manufacturer’s knowledge, the less onerous its duty. Ignorance, no matter how unjustified, affords a complete defense to a charge of negligence in the ordinary case. 1

This, in the majority’s view, is the only alternative to a holding that all manufacturers, in whatever circumstances, are charged with knowledge of every loading practice, however “pe *332 culiar” “unique”, or “even strange,” occurring in “any port which the purchaser, a shipper, or transporter might select for loading and embarkation.” 2

I

The case was tried and submitted to the jury upon a more sensible middle ground.

The jury was not instructed that Simpson “was obliged to learn” of the longshoremen’s practice, no matter how unreasonable that obligation might be; the jury was not instructed that Simpson must “insure that [its] product be packaged in anticipation of whatever use to which it may be subjected by stevedores loading it as a part of a ship’s cargo.”

Quite the contrary, the trial court instructed the…

369 F.2d 324 SIMPSON TIMBER CO. and Grace Line, Inc., Appellants, v. Ezra PARKS, Appellee. SIMPSON TIMBER CO., Appellant, v. GRACE LINE, INC., et al., Appellees. No. 19673. United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. Nov. 9, 1966, Rehearing Denied Jan. 6, 1967. Kenneth E. Roberts, of Mautz, Souther, Spaulding, Kinsey & Williamson, John R. Brooke, of Wood, Wood, Tatum, Mosser & Brooke, Portland, Or., for appellants. John R. Brooke, of Wood, Wood, Tatum, Mosser & Brooke, Nathan J. Heath, of Gray, Fredrickson & Heath, Philip A. Levin, of Pozzi, Levin & Willson, Portland, Or., for appellee. Before CHAMBERS, BARNES, HAMLEY, JERTBERG, MERRILL, KOELSCH, BROWNING, DUNIWAY and ELY, Circuit Judges. ELY, Circuit Judge: 1 A longshoreman stowing cargo was injured when he stepped through the packaging on a bundle of doors. The Simpson Timber Company manufactured the doors. In filling an order for an exporter it was required to package the doors for shipment overseas. The doors were cut to leave openings for glass. The manufacturer packaged the doors in a stack forty-two inches high, with the window openings aligned so that a well was formed. A cardboard cover was wrapped…