Opinion
June 19, 1995
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Kings County (Ramirez, J.).
Ordered that the order is affirmed, with costs.
The plaintiff Emilia E. Jemmott suffered a severe injury to the fourth finger of her left hand when it was caught in a drill press machine owned by her employer, the third-party defendant Artex Green Corporation. The plaintiffs commenced this action, inter alia, to recover damages based on strict products liability against the defendant Commander Multi-Drill, Division of Reynolds Machine and Tool Corp. (hereinafter RMT), among others. The plaintiffs claimed, inter alia, that a component part of the drill press manufactured by RMT, the multi-spindle drill unit, was defective because it did not contain a guard in violation of the regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (hereinafter OSHA) or the standards set by the American National Standards Institute (hereinafter ANSI). RMT's motion for summary judgment was granted by the Supreme Court, which determined that the plaintiffs failed to indicate how RMT violated either the OSHA regulations or the ANSI standards.
In searching this record, we find that the multi-spindle drill unit supplied by RMT is not shown to be defective in design or specifications (see, Leahy v. Mid-West Conveyor Corp., 120 A.D.2d 16; Munger v. Heider Mfg. Corp., 90 A.D.2d 645). No triable issue of fact is raised by the plaintiffs' expert, William Burrill, who, in a conclusory affidavit, opined that the proximate cause of Emilia E. Jemmott's injuries was the improper guarding of the drill press itself at the point where her hand came into contact with the work zone of the press (see, Amatulli v. Delhi Constr. Corp., 77 N.Y.2d 525; Moore v. Deere Co., 195 A.D.2d 1044).
While ANSI standards (see, Sawyer v. Dreis Krump Mfg. Co., 67 N.Y.2d 328) and OSHA regulations (see, Feiner v. Calvin Klein, Ltd., 157 A.D.2d 501) may be indicative of what may constitute negligence, neither is dispositive. OSHA regulations are not applicable here, in any event, since those regulations generally govern employee/employer relationships, not strict products liability actions between employees and manufacturers (see, Berzaghi v. Maislin Transp., 115 A.D.2d 679; see also, McHargue v Stokes Div., 912 F.2d 394; Pellescki v. City of Rochester, 198 A.D.2d 762). Furthermore, ANSI standards are not relevant to causes of action grounded in strict products liability (see, e.g., Rexrode v. American Laundry Press Co., 674 F.2d 826, cert denied 459 U.S. 862). Bracken, J.P., Ritter, Joy and Goldstein, JJ., concur.