http://www.tablesawinjurylawyers.com/table-saw-lawsuits/?gclid=CKHB_8KBnr4CFc9AMgodz2cAhw
what ever happened to "keep your fingers clear"
lawyers suck
and the judge in the first case should be hung..technically everyone that owns anything can sue if there is better tech out even though they were too cheap to buy it.
CAN-O WORMS!
Please don't denigrate my entire profession, or at least admit that lawyers are people, and it is PEOPLE who suck.
As a lawyer, I try to educate myself about the facts and operative law of a case before I pass judgment, so I went and looked up the court of appeals opinion that approved the award that the JURY made. In this case (as in virtually every case in which folks complain mightily of an allegedly absurd damages award), it is 12 ordinary people who make the final call as to whether wrong was done, and if so what should be done about it, and they have to make that call according to legal principles that reflect the values of fairness and common sense that we have shared for generations (going back to as early as 8th century England).
As the appellate court noted, "It is the province of the jury to determine whether the relevant factors, properly balanced, suggest that a product's design is unreasonable."
Osorio v. One World Technologies Inc., 659 F.3d 81, 85 (1st Cir. 2011). It is also the province of the jury to measure the damage done by the "unreasonable" conduct of the defendant. The jury cannot, however, award damages if there is no reason to think the manufacturer should have made a safer machine, even if a safer machine COULD have been built. As the court also explained, "A reasonably fit product need not be a risk-free product, however. Even where the product design creates a risk of foreseeable harm, the question is whether this risk was unreasonable.”
Osorio v. One World Technologies Inc., 659 F.3d 81, 85 (1st Cir. 2011).
I don't know who the jurors were in this case, or what they did for a living, or why they came down the way they did on the issues. But they sat through days (and possibly weeks) worth of evidence and argument on both sides of every question they had to answer on their verdict form and decided that Ryobi's design decisions put this construction worker (and others) at risk, that Ryobi knew it was putting people at risk, and that Ryobi had no excuse for doing better. Since I wasn't there, and I don't know all that they did when making the decision to award 1.5 million in damages, I don't think I'm in a particularly good spot to second-guess them.