George Dedmon v. Falls Products Incorporated

WISDOM, Circuit Judge.

The principal question this case presents is whether corporate defendants amenable to service of process are absent from the state within the meaning of an Alabama statute tolling the statute of limitations during the absence of a defendant.

George Dedmon was standing in his son’s yard in Bessemer, Alabama, June 26, 1958, when he was struck by the broken blade of a rotary power lawn mower. The metal hurtled sixty feet through the air, struck his left hand, and nearly amputated it. The lawn mower, which Dedmon’s neighbor had purchased from a local merchant in Bessemer,…