Oven Door Case Summary

A. According to the facts, Smith bought a stove that was manufactured by the ABC Company. Since he bought a stove it was certainly foreseeable that that he would use the stove to cook. Smith should have known that the intended use of a stove is to cook food. There was not any heat in Smith’s kitchen which is the reason why he had the oven door wide open. However, this brings to me to the question of why didn’t he just use a miniature personal heater and place it in his kitchen? The activity that Smith was engaged in (resting his feet on the oven door) was rarely foreseeable. Moreover, resting your feet on the inside of an oven door is considered a highly dangerous and irresponsible activity. It is predictable almost to a certainty foreseeable that a possible injury could occur when someone is misusing a stove.

Some of the questions that need to be asked are: Why did Smith think that resting his feet in the opening of the oven door was a good idea?

Why didn’t Smith think that the activity he was engaging in was dangerous? If Smith knew that he was going to use the stove for an unintended purpose why didn’t he think to bolt the stove down to the floor or to the wall in order to prevent it from falling forward? Why didn’t he think about how he was putting an uneven weight distribution onto the opening of the oven door? Was he sitting in the chair with his feet rested on the oven door for an extended period of time? If so, for how long? Why didn’t common sense tell him that he was engaging in a dangerous activity? Would a reasonably prudent person engage in the same dangerous activity of resting their feet on the opening of an oven

door?
This injury was not reasonably foreseeable to the ABC Company. They manufacture cooking stoves so that consumers can buy the stoves and cook food with them. ABC Company’s intended use of the cooking stoves are to cook food not to use them as a source of heat. This injury was highly unusual because ABC Company could not have foreseen this happening. While ABC Company would have a fair probability of foreseeing a cooking related injury with their stoves, they could not have foreseen an injury with their stoves because someone was using it as a way to heat up their kitchen and decided to rest their feet on the opening of the oven doors. Smith was misusing the stove.
The counter analysis that Smith would most likely use is that ABC Company should have included a warning label. They should have also had an instruction booklet that stated the possibility of it falling over. They most likely should have stated in visible or big bold letters that the stove could get to dangerous hot temperatures and to use it with caution. If they failed to do those things then Smith would most likely try to claim that ABC Company was negligent because of their failure to warn customers about the stove possibly collapsing. However, this issue was not foreseeable to ABC Company and it was not their fault that Smith chose to misuse the stove.