Federal Jury Finds Boat Propeller Defectively Designed After Lake Austin Amputation; Fifth Circuit Affirms

On July 1, 2005, Jacob Brochtrup, then 18, was on Lake Austin with friends aboard a 17.6-foot Sea Ray boat powered by a 135-horsepower MerCruiser sterndrive engine manufactured by Mercury Marine. He had just finished a wakeboarding run when the tow rope slipped into the water. Brochtrup jumped in to retrieve it. The boat operator, unaware that Brochtrup was in the water, put the vessel in reverse. The rotating propeller caught his right leg.

The injury was catastrophic. Surgeons ultimately amputated Brochtrup's right leg at the hip joint. He was 18 years old.

Robert "Robby" Alden, then with the Austin firm Byrd Davis (now Byrd Davis Alden & Henrichson, LLP), filed suit in the Western District of Texas against Sea Ray Boats and Mercury Marine, both divisions of Brunswick Corporation. The claim was product liability based on design defect: the boat and engine had been sold without any propeller guard or protective shroud that would shield a person in the water from the rotating blades. Plaintiffs' engineering experts testified that guards could have been installed without impairing the boat's performance or the engine's output.

Getting a verdict proved difficult. The first trial ended in a hung jury. The second also ended without agreement. A third federal jury heard the case in early 2010.

On April 5, 2010, the third jury found the unguarded propeller was a defectively designed product and awarded $3.8 million in damages. The jury apportioned 66 percent of the fault to Brunswick, producing a judgment against the company of approximately $2 million. The remaining fault was assigned to Brochtrup and the boat operator.

Brunswick, through Mercury Marine and Sea Ray, appealed to the Fifth Circuit, contesting the design-defect finding. On May 27, 2011, the court of appeals unanimously affirmed. The Fifth Circuit held that sufficient evidence supported the jury's conclusion that the propeller, sold without a guard, was "unreasonably dangerous," and that a guard would have prevented the injury without adversely affecting boat or engine performance. According to Brochtrup's trial counsel, the parties collectively spent more than $1 million testing the propeller-guard design over the course of the litigation.