Boston Personal Injury Attorney Blog
According to recent news report from CNN, professional golfer Greg Norman was hospitalized after being injured in a chainsaw accident. Norman had posted pictures of himself with the chainsaw on the social media platform Instagram with a caption that it was time trim the sea grapes and that you should never pay someone to do a job you can do yourself.
Later that same day, Norman posted another photograph showing himself in a hospital with an air cast on his arm. In this photograph he told viewers that he was lucky to be alive, to always respect chainsaws, and the he still had the use of his left hand.
It has been reported that he injured himself while using the chainsaw and required surgery to repair the resulting nerve damage. He is expected to make a full recovery.
While it appears that Norman will be okay when his arm heals, our injury attorneys in Boston know accidents involving power tools and heavy machinery often end with more tragic results.
While there are many occasions where the injury was truly an accident for which nobody was at fault, there are also times when the injury is the result of a defectively designed tool, or the result of the manufacturer failing to adequately warn users of dangers the company knew or should have known about.
In the case of a tool such as chainsaw, the company is required to perform extensive testing to see if the tool is likely to result in an accident during normal operation. Many accidents that were once commonplace are now preventable through the use of proper safety guards and warning labels conspicuously placed on the product.
This is the reason that if you were to look at a modern power tool, such as a table saw, it would look very different from one manufactured 50 years ago. Now, the tools are equipped with a number of safety guards and emergency stop mechanisms to prevent injury to workers.
Unfortunately, many of these modern safety features were not done out of the companies’ desire to insure the safety of their customers. There have been numerous lawsuits filed over time that have shown that companies were often aware of a defectively dangerous condition on one or more of their products, and still failed to remedy the problem because it would have been costly. Companies have been willing to risk the safety, and even lives, of consumers to protect the profitability of their products.
Companies have also been hesitant to include warnings on products out of concerns that sales would decrease if consumers thought the product was unsafe.
While the facts of every case are different, and you should speak with your attorney about your particular situation, through the discovery process, your attorney can request internal memos and other company records that may prove that a manufacturer was aware of a dangerous condition and failed to warn consumers. Failure to adequately warn of known dangers is a claim typically filed in products liability lawsuits.
If you are injured in an accident in Boston, call Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers for a free and confidential appointment — (617) 777-7777.
Additional Resources:
Greg Norman Damaged Hand in Chainsaw Accident, September 14, 2014, CNN
More Blog Entries:
Partenfelder v. Rohde: On Federal Preemption in Negligence Actions, August 3, 2014, Boston Personal Injury Lawyer Blog