Written Materials from DRI Presentation

I previously posted here a de-brief from my time at the 2011 DRI Products Liability Conference in New Orleans last week.  As indicated in the post, I had the opportunity to speak at the Agricultural, Construction, Mining, and Industrial Equipment ("ACMIE") Specialized Litigation Group breakout session on Thursday.  My task was to present on the "top 10" ACMIE cases from 2010. 

Although this is the "South Carolina Products Liability Law Blog" and it focuses on South Carolina law, I thought that you may find the materials to be of interest if you work with this type of equipment.  The written materials from my presentation can be found at this link, and the materials include a brief of Holst v. KCI Konecranes Int’l Corp., 699 S.E.2d 715 (S.C. Ct. App. 2010) , a South Carolina case from 2010 that I blogged about here when the South Carolina Court of Appeals issued its opinion.

You are probably wondering my "methodology" (for you Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals fans) for singling out these ten ACMIE cases.  This was no small task.  Suffice it to say that I checked all the boxes for meeting a stringent Daubert analysis.  First, my methodology was "reliable" because it involved a Westlaw search that included all the products liability key words for these types of products: agricultural, construction, mining, "industrial equipment," "products liability," "strict liability," "breach of warranty," negligence...and the list goes on.  After entering all of these words into the legal database, it generated well over 200 cases in both state and federal court from 2010.  To ensure the "relevance" of the cases, I then skimmed all of them to make a first cut at whittling the list down to about thirty cases that really seemed to focus on this type of equipment and involve substantive legal issues.  From these cases, I selected ten that I thought were the most interesting.  After that, I read and briefed all the cases, which is what is set forth in the written materials. 

Hey, if you went through this drill, I am sure you would probably come up with a different list.  However, I doubt you want to take that kind of time when I have done the work for you.  These are the ones I came up with, and hopefully you find them to be of interest if you work with these types of products.

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