Human Resource Selection 9th Edition by Marianne Jennings

Exercise 7

Lawrence Hardesty, a long-haul tractor-trailer driver, picked up a load of stadium seating equipment for delivery to an NFL stadium under construction in Baltimore. While workers were loading the seats and equipment, Mr. Hardesty stayed in the cab of his truck completing the necessary paperwork for the transport. There was a great deal of unused space in the trailer after the seats and equipment were loaded, but Mr. Hardesty did not check the load. When Mr. Hardesty arrived in Baltimore, he opened the truck doors and the shifted boxes fell on him and injured him. Mr. Hardesty filed suit against American Seating for the negligence of its workers in loading the seats and boxes. American Seating defended on the grounds that its workers were not experts in shipping and hauling and that Mr. Hardesty was contributorily negligent for not checking the load before he left. Discuss the issues and decide who should prevail. [ Hardesty v American Seating Co., 194 F.Supp. 447 (D. Md. 2002)]