Feliciano v. Toyota Industrial Equipment Mfg., Inc.
Plaintiff was injured while operating a forklift manufactured by defendant Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing, Inc. (Toyota). A forklift tire split, toppling the forklift. Plaintiff landed on the warehouse floor, and the forklift came down on his leg. Plaintiffs leg was crushed and later amputated below the knee. Plaintiff sued Toyota for a defective forklift design that placed excessive force on the vehicles tires. After a month-long trial, the jury found Toyota liable for defective design of the forklift on the legal theory of strict products liability. The trial court entered judgment on the jurys verdict, assessing damages of $1.8 million against Toyota.
Court conclude that Toyota forfeited its claim concerning the burden of proving a safer alternative design by failing to raise it in the trial court. The claim is also unsupported by California law, which tasks the manufacturer with proving that the benefits of the challenged design outweigh the risks. We also conclude that substantial evidence supports the jurys verdict, and that there was no juror misconduct. Workers compensation principles referenced during deliberations were not derived from improper extraneous sources, but from courtroom proceedings and common knowledge.
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