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Defective products and unsafe product
design stems from the manufacturer's failure to design
safeguards for their products foreseeable uses. These
cases are referred to as 'Product Liability' cases.
Here are three recent cases that underscore
our competence in the area of defective product litigation;
Sawyer v. Asplundh Tree Chipper
Co., Serrrano/Zaldana
v. Thoro-Matic, and Reyes
v. Pederson Mfg. Co.
In the first defective
products case, Sawyer
v. Asplundh Tree Chipper Co.,
our client, Ned Sawyer, an experienced tree trimmer,
was on the job inserting a large branch into a tree chipper
when his arms were inadvertently forced into the moving
blades. If the tree chipper had been equipped with a safety
device on the edge of the feeding bed, the amputation
of his arms could have been prevented. Ed Steinbrecher
asserted that this unsafe product design made the tree
chipper unsafe, insisting that product safety is every
manufacturer's responsibility. Ed Sterinbrecher settled
the case before trial for $4,200,000.
In
the second product liability case,
Serrano/Zaldana v. Thoro-matic,
our clients, Hispanic laborers, were told by their employer
to remove tile glue from a cement floor. They used a
chemical to loosen the glue. The final step was the
use of a Thoro-Matic floor machine that warned in English
only that the machine sparked and could cause an explosion
if used with flammable chemicals. Our clients could
not read or understand the yellow warning label on the
machine. They poured flammable Acetone on the floor
of a small room and then turned the Thoro-Matic machine
on. The machine caused the vapors to explode, burning
both of them. A product liability lawsuit was brought
against the manufacturer for failing to provide universal
warning, such as a pictogram, to warn of the risk of
explosion from sparking. The mechanical start switches,
which sparked, should have been replaced with solid-state
switches that did not spark. Ed Sterinbrecher settled
the lawsuit for unsafe product design before trial for
the policy limits of $2,000,000 from the machine
manufacturer and $100,000 from the retail store.
The third unsafe
product design case, Reyes v.
Pederson Mfg. Co., our client, Ramon Reyes, lost
the functional use of his left hand when a press he
was operating accidentally came down without warning,
causing the amputation of several fingers. He could
no longer work doing physical labor. The defendant Vilil
Pedersen Mfg. Co. refused to take responsibility for
the presence of a safety defeat switch and the absence
of warnings. Ed
Sterinbrecher settled the product
liability case before
trial for $1,100,000.
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