Wilkes Wirth v. Clark Equipment Company, a Corporation

WILLIAM P. GRAY, District Judge.

The plaintiff in this diversity action was a longshoreman on the waterfront at Portland, Oregon, whose duties required him to work as a part of a crew attending a thirty-ton motor driven wheeled vehicle, known as a van carrier, which ran over him, thereby inflicting severe injuries that included the loss of a leg. Defendant Clark Equipment Company had manufactured the van carrier and had sold it to Matson Navigation Company, in whose service it was being operated at the time of the accident.

The plaintiff sought recovery on the basis of two separate theories,…