Managers and the Legal Environment 7th Edition by David Madsen, Constance Bagley

Exercise 2

Laura Hollister was a business student at Northwestern University. She attended a business school party and then returned to her apartment with a friend. When Hollister left the party, she was intoxicated. She woke the next morning with no memory of subsequent events after she had returned to her apartment, but she had third-degree burns over 55% of her body. From the evidence, police determined that she had been cooking; when she reached for the cupboard over the stove, her shirt brushed against the hot burner and caught fire. Hollister brought an action against the department store where her mother purchased the shirt on the grounds that the shirt was defective because it lacked a warning regarding its extreme flammability. The department store argued that the danger inherent in having clothing come into contact with a hot stove is "open and obvious." How should the court rule? [Hollister v. Dayton Hudson Corp., 201 F.3d 731 (6th Cir. 2000).]