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Adding to the list of people who grew up on a ranch... Growing up in the 80s and 90s, we had a bunch of old farm equipment, some from like the 1930s-era. Mostl
by dbg31415 5y ago
Adding to the list of people who grew up on a ranch...
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, we had a bunch of old farm equipment, some from like the 1930s-era. Mostly a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s.
And like every bit of equipment on the place had special operation rules.
"Don't run that tractor past 5k RPMs" or "Don't use the PTO Shaft (Power Take Off, the gear in the back that hooks in to power towed equipment) from Tractor A with Equipment Item B since it'll blow out." "Remember Tractor J is Brand X, but it has an engine from Brand Z, and a PTO shaft from Brand Y..."
Point being, like every piece of equipment was rigged together with duct tape. It's horrible unsafe. When you buy used equipment, nothing comes written down... like you try it, break it, and duct tape it all back together again.
Parts from Brand Y in Engine X -- because that's what the implement had in stock when you needed to repair something. Lots of home-welds, lots of splice jobs. Need a new hose? Grab one off a car... it's not rated for the tractor, but it sort of fits... and it lets you get the job done today... so cool, "works" and then likely just forget about it until it breaks.
So how on earth could John Deere be liable for the performance or safety of their equipment? If a John Deere tractor blows up, or more aptly some part suffers catastrophic failure and hurts someone... who's at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs?
And, in the case of accidents, even if it's the farmer who is at, the brand suffers from the news report, "A farmer father of 7 was killed today when his John Deere tractor malfunctioned..." Left out of the story is the fact that the farmer didn't repair it to spec, or the guy the farmer bought it from didn't repair it to spec...
Anyway I side with John Deere here. It's chaos not to lock this stuff down. Who owns liability? These things are used hard, they break frequently -- especially with age. How to you know something actually works right if you don't lock down the repair process?
- shagie 5y ago> So how on earth could John Deere be liable for the performance or safety of their equipment? If a John Deere tractor blows up, or more aptly some part suffers catastrophic failure and hurts someone... who's at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs? This gets to a very interesting question when it comes to industrial equipment (which farm equipment falls under). Unless there is *VERY CLEAR* instructions not to do it, and the manufacturer made an effort to prevent it, the manufacturer is nearly always liable. (slide 14 https://www.slideserve.com/butch/product-liability-law-in-the-farm-equipment-industry https://www.slideserve.com/butch/product-liability-law-in-th... and also note slide 54 with respect to the liability - the video presentation of this slide deck is at https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY ) Additionally. as you noted, the news that {Brand} equipment broke and killed someone travels much faster and does more impact than the later findings that {Brand} was not at fault because the owner had removed the safety equipment from it.
- dbg31415 5y agoReally interesting. Thanks for sharing!