Law Life: Please, Mr. Postman, turn down that alarm!

By Pat Murphy
The Daily Record Newswire

When you’re running $8.5 billion in the red, every penny counts.

So it’s a good thing that last week the U.S. Postal Service succeeded in turning away a $150,000 lawsuit brought by an elderly Oregon woman who curiously blamed a postage vending machine for her hearing loss.

Marlene Pickens’ misadventure occurred on July 23, 2005. That day, Marlene went to the Sherwood post office with her five-year-old grandson.

Marlene and the boy entered the lobby to get postage from a vending machine. As Marlene was deciding which stamps she wanted, the little crumb cruncher pushed the coin return button on the vending machine and all hell broke loose.

Marlene’s grandson had just managed to upset the Model l625B Postal Products Vending Machine. You don’t want to mess with the 1625B.

No, the 1625B doesn’t emit poison gas or self-destruct when it feels threatened, but it does have a nasty sounding security alarm and a strobe light security feature.

Now, normally the 1625B isn’t supposed to sound an alarm when the coin return button is pushed, but they can be twitchy. Marlene’s grandson had gotten on this 1625B’s bad side and off went the alarm.

Naturally, with the alarm blaring and the strobe light flashing, the startled boy burst into tears. Marlene reached down to grab the boy and in typical “bad day” fashion managed to dump the contents of her purse all over the lobby floor.

Gathering up her belongings and grandson, Marlene fled from the post office, leaving the indignant 1625B behind.

Immediately, Marlene noticed a ringing in her ears that didn’t leave her. Marlene hadn’t had hearing problems before, but now she alleges that she experiences continuous, high-pitched ringing in her ears. She claims that the condition keeps her from sleeping and has caused her to suffer from depression.

So Marlene sued the U.S. Postal Service for negligence, alleging that the 1625B’s alarm system created a foreseeable risk of harm to post office customers. According to Marlene’s evidence, her hearing problems were the result of being exposed to 108 decibels of noise from the alarm for a period of approximately one minute.

In response, the Postal Service contended that it had never received complaints of hearing loss due to the 1625B’s alarm. The agency produced evidence showing that the 1625B’s alarm sounded for three minutes and reached a maximum noise level of 103.8 decibels.

This was within the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s maximum levels for industrial noise exposure (115 decibels for 15 minutes a day), the National Fire Protection Association fire alarm and signaling code maximum total sound pressure (110 decibels), and the Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards audible alarm signals maximum (120 decibels).

United States Magistrate Judge Paul Papak had the task of addressing the Postal Service’s motion for summary judgment.

Of particular note for personal injury attorneys, Judge Papak decided that the Postal Service’s evidence regarding industry standards was not dispositive.

“[T]he fact that [Marlene] was exposed to noise within the applicable standards does not conclusively establish that the 1625B machine’s alarm did not create a foreseeable risk of injury,” the judge wrote.

The judge also found inconclusive the evidence regarding whether the Postal Service had notice of a safety issue regarding the alarm.

He noted that Marlene presented evidence that “the Sherwood postmaster held one ear when approaching the 1625B when the alarm had activated, thought the alarm was too loud, and had seen customers hurriedly leave the lobby, move away from the machine, or cover their ears when the alarm sounded. Consistent with those concerns, the postmaster asked if the alarm volume could be lowered.

“Thus, despite the lack of complaints of hearing-related injuries, the Sherwood postmaster attempted to reduce the volume of the alarm. These facts might permit a reasonable juror to find that the United States’ conduct in continuing to use the loud alarm created a foreseeable risk of hearing-related injury.”

However, the Judge Papak ultimately decided that Marlene’s negligence claim failed as a matter of law because she could not show that the Postal Service acted unreasonably with respect to business invitees in equipping the 1625B with a loud alarm.

The judge wrote that “vending machine alarms were viewed as useful security measures to protect postal products, especially because of the high cost of using security cameras to monitor areas open to the public and because postal staff would be unlikely to respond to a security situation with a 1625B machine during the evening and weekend, when the machines were most vulnerable. In sum, the time, effort, and risk to the United States of eliminating the alarm indicate that retaining the alarm was reasonable.” (Pickens v. U.S.)