Products Liability Law Daily Wrap Up, DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING DEFECTS—INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL EQUIPMENT—E.D. Pa.: Die-cutter maker faces trial over worker’s fatal crushing accident, (Jul 9, 2026)

By Pankhuri Bhatnagar, B.A. LL.B.

Competing expert opinions created disputes regarding the machine’s alleged design defects, causation, and the foreseeability of making post-sale modifications to access the machine’s interior for cleaning.

In an action brought against an industrial machine manufacturer by the daughter of a die-cutter operator who was fatally crushed inside the machine, a federal district court in Pennsylvania granted in part and denied in part the manufacturer’s motion for summary judgment. The strict liability and negligent design defect claims proceeded because triable issues existed as to whether the machine failed to incorporate feasible safeguards such as an interlocked guard or additional light curtains and whether the manufacturer had a duty to protect against foreseeable misuse of operators entering a running machine. The estate’s manufacturing defect claim failed for lack of evidence of a malfunction while the failure-to-warn theory was abandoned (Montgomery v. Bobst Mex SA, No. 24-367 (E.D. Pa. July 1, 2026)).

Background. A man was employed by Graphic Packaging International, LLC (GPI) to operate the Mastercut 145 PER 2.0 die-cutter machine for processing cardboard into food packaging. On the day of the incident, he entered the machine without first pressing an emergency-stop button or using lockout/tagout procedures. Approximately 90 minutes later, he was found dead beneath a loaded pallet in the delivery area due to traumatic asphyxiation. His daughter, individually and on behalf of his estate, sued the machine’s manufacturer, Bobst North America, Inc. (Bobst NA), for strict products liability, negligence, wrongful death, and survival. The manufacturer sought summary judgment.

Product’s functionality. The Mastercut contained an “operator’s side” for operators to observe the moving cardboard through transparent windows, a “feeder side” for inserting material, a “waste removal system” for vacuuming generated paper waste, and a “delivery section” for receiving finished products by lowering a delivery plate as the pallet was filled. Safety features including light curtains, movable interlocked guards, emergency-stop switches, and sensors were intended to prevent access to hazardous areas or stop machine motion. The operator platform was separated from its interior by side panels equipped with fixed guards, but GPI added handles and tabs to facilitate the removal of one panel.

Design defect. Pennsylvania recognizes strict liability for defective design under Restatement (Second) of Torts §402A. Under Tincher v. Omega Flex, Inc., 104 A.3d 328 (Pa. 2014), a defect may be established through either the consumer-expectations or risk-utility test. Because the parties did not meaningfully address the former, the court considered whether the probability and seriousness of harm from the Mastercut outweighed the burden or cost of precautions. The estate’s design expert opined that the Mastercut was defectively designed because (1) the removable panel should have incorporated an interlocked guard and/or additional light curtains; (2) the moving machine parts presented substantial risk of causing serious operator injuries; (3) it did not instruct users on how to access the machine’s interior; (4) it contained insufficient warnings about the crush hazard; and (5) it did not incorporate his proposed safeguards that were economically and technologically feasible and had been incorporated elsewhere on the machine.

Bobst’s engineering expert responded that (1) the machine was not in a defective condition when it left the manufacturer’s control; (2) it was safely designed with fixed guards on the panels under the operator platform; (3) the manufacturer provided detailed instructions requiring the main motor to be shut down before anyone entered it; (4) the accident would not have occurred if the employer heeded the manual warnings about de-energizing the Mastercut and keeping the guards in place before entering; and (5) the proposed designs could have resulted in unnecessary shutdowns triggered by falling scrap papers, although the opposing expert believed that his suggested light curtains could be calibrated to avoid such interruptions. In light of these competing expert opinions on several risk-utility factors, the court held that the design defect dispute was not appropriate for summary judgment resolution.

Malfunction theory. The estate separately pursued a manufacturing defect claim under Pennsylvania’s malfunction theory, which permits proof of a defect through circumstantial evidence. A claimant must establish the occurrence of a malfunction while eliminating abnormal use and reasonable secondary causes. The daughter pointed out that the delivery plate was initially high enough for the operator to enter beneath it, the machine was not actively operating when he entered, the delivery door was open when his body was discovered even though the plate allegedly was not at the proper height, and the machine had previously malfunctioned. However, the court had already excluded her liability expert’s malfunction opinions as speculative. Moreover, several alternative explanations remained such as the machine pausing due to a pallet misalignment, and testing conducted two days after the accident revealed no malfunction. Accordingly, the manufacturing defect claim failed due to insufficient evidence.

Post-sale modification. Bobst NA next argued that GPI’s removal and modification of the fixed panel constituted a substantial and unforeseeable post-sale product modification which relieved the manufacturer of liability. Davis v. Berwind Corp., 690 A.2d 186, 190 (Pa. 1997). The estate countered that the panel modification was foreseeable since it was affixed with removable screws and intended to be removable, Bobst’s representative admitted that Bobst was aware of customers removing panels, and the owner’s manual contemplated that operators and maintenance personnel would sometimes need to enter the machine but did not identify a proper access point. Further, GPI added handles to the panel to allow workers to regularly enter the interior to unjam the pallet turntable, and its workers possessed Torx screwdrivers to unscrew the panel. The case at bar differed from precedents where employers removed safety devices in direct violation of specific warnings since the manual here did not mention the fixed panel guards, no warning appeared on the subject panel, and the general warnings about following lockout procedures before entering were not visible from the operator’s side. Thus, genuine issues existed as to whether the modification was foreseeable and a superseding cause of the decedent’s injury.

Negligence. The negligence claim required proof that Bobst breached its duty of care to the decedent and that such breach was the cause of his death. The estate’s expert report identified industry standards and guidelines governing machine design and guarding, and opined that Bobst NA violated them by failing to use additional safeguards. Bobst countered that its risk assessment under applicable international and ANSI standards showed that fixed guards were sufficient. But the opposing expert asserted that an interlocked guard and additional curtains were needed as the panel required frequent removal and manufacturers had a duty to protect against foreseeable misuse during maintenance and unjamming, thus creating triable issues concerning breach. Other record evidence supported the finding that the absence of additional safeguards caused the death, but there existed questions as to whether GPI’s modification or the operator’s conduct broke the causal chain, and these questions were fit for the jury. The court therefore denied summary judgment on negligent design.

The case is No. 24-367.

Judge: Arteaga, J.

Attorneys: Jeffrey P. Goodman (Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky PC) for Tabria Montgomery. Tara C. O'Mahoney (Cremer Law, LLC) for Bobst Group North America, Inc. Michael P. Rausch (Goldberg Segalla) for Bobst Mex SA.

Companies: Bobst Group North America, Inc.; Bobst Mex SA; Graphic Packaging Corp.; Graphic Packaging Group, LLC; Graphic Packaging International, Inc.

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