Alleged failure to exercise reasonable care in upholstery or reupholstery of a chair & failure to warn of a known danger; Negligence; Loweke v Ann Arbor Ceiling & Partition Co, LLC; Duty to use ordinary care; Fultz v Union-Commerce Assocs; Res ipsa loquitor; Pugno v Blue Harvest Farms, LLC; Woodard v Custer

Finding no ground to impute liability to defendant-reupholstery company without any evidence of negligence, the court held that the trial court did not err by dismissing plaintiff’s claim for injuries caused by the collapse of a defective chair in her doctor’s office. She sued defendant and others for her injuries. The trial court dismissed her negligence claim and found that her product liability claim failed as defendant did not design, manufacture, or sell the defective chair. On appeal, the court held that the trial court did not err by dismissing her negligence claim, noting that although defendant owed plaintiff a duty to use ordinary care, plaintiff failed to show that defendant “breached its duty or caused the chair collapse.” There was no evidence that defendant "was negligent in sending two employees to move the five-seater with the assistance of furniture dollies.” And, based on the testimony at trial, “the five-seater collapsed because two segments of the base cylinder came apart.” It was also “mere speculation that the turning of the cylinder was a harbinger of collapse.” Further, because no one “with direct knowledge of the five-seater’s condition” was deposed, there was “no admissible evidence regarding the seat’s pre-reupholstery condition.” The court also rejected her claim that because chairs generally do not collapse without some negligence, res ipsa loquitor put defendant “on the hook for the negligence” here. It noted that “chairs sometimes fail in the absence of” negligence, that the five-seater was not in defendant’s exclusive control, and that there was “no indication that ‘evidence of the true explanation of the event’ was ‘more readily accessible’” to defendant than to other parties. Affirmed.