In a recent decision, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied a motion for summary judgment filed by Ideal Shield LLC (“Ideal Shield”), a manufacturer of sign components used in a Target parking lot. The Court held that Ideal Shield had not shown that the risk of a sign tipping due to an insufficient ballast was so well known and obvious that it eliminated the need for a warning. As a result, the plaintiff’s claims for strict liability, negligence, and breach of warranty were allowed to proceed to trial.
In Fernandes v. Target Corp., No. 24-105, 2025 WL 4567890 (E.D. Pa. July 2, 2025), the plaintiff, Ana Fernandes, alleged that she was struck in the head by a freestanding sign while walking through the parking lot of a Target Corporation (“Target”) store in Springfield, Pennsylvania. The sign consisted of three components. The base and post were designed and supplied by Ideal Shield. The sign plate itself was designed by co-defendant, Federal Heath Sign Company, LLC (“Federal Heath”). Target purchased the complete sign assembly from Federal Heath, which had in turn sourced the base. The entire unit was assembled by Target employees.
Ideal Shield’s packaging included product instructions recommending four to five fifty-pound bags of sand to be placed in the base as ballast. Target did not have documentation as to how much sand was placed in the sign to provide a ballast. Additionally, Target did not have any documentation that it ever repaired the sign. The sign was later dislodged by wind and struck plaintiff in the head, resulting in head injuries and a suit against all three companies.
Before trial, Target and Federal Heath reached settlements with the plaintiff, leaving Ideal Shield as the sole remaining defendant. Ideal Shield then moved for summary judgment, arguing that it had no duty to warn because the risk of the sign tipping was obvious.
The Court disagreed. It explained that, under Pennsylvania law, a product manufacturer has a duty to warn of non-obvious dangers associated with the use of its product. A manufacturer may avoid this duty only if the danger is so apparent that there is a general consensus in the relevant community that the risk is obvious. See Stratos v. Sagless Corp., Civ. A. No. 93-6712, 1994 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18074, 1994 WL 709375, at *2, 6 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 21, 1994) (quoting Metzgar v. Playskool, Inc. 30 F.3d 459, 465 (3d Cir. 1994)). Ideal Shield did not meet that burden. It failed to define the relevant community of users for its product and offered no evidence that such users would recognize the tipping hazard as “obvious.” Without that evidentiary foundation, the Court found that it could not determine as a matter of law that the risk was obvious. Accordingly, it denied summary judgment on the strict liability claim for failure to warn. The same analysis applied to the plaintiff’s additional claims for breach of implied warranty and negligence. Ideal Shield had argued that there was no defect or breach of duty because the tipping risk was universally known. But the Court reiterated that this was a fact-intensive inquiry, and without a defined community and supporting evidence, the question of obviousness could not be resolved on summary judgment.
This ruling underscores that the “obviousness” defense is a narrow exception to the duty to warn in product liability cases and must be supported by concrete evidence. Under Pennsylvania law, a manufacturer may avoid liability for failing to warn only if it can demonstrate that the risk was obvious to the relevant user community. However, the Fernandes decision reinforces that courts require a factual basis for finding a risk to be obvious and will not substitute assumption or inference for evidence. Pennsylvania manufacturers must be prepared to produce specific proof of common knowledge, within the user community when relying on the obviousness defense in failure-to-warn claims, or risk seeing their cases head straight to trial.
The Fernandes decision can be found here.
For additional questions, please contact Conrad James Benedetto, Esq. and/or Patrick Henry, Esq.
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