Man wins $1.5m in first of its kind saw case | Hacker News Reader

Man wins $1.5m in first of its kind saw case

boston.com

15 pointsabsconditus23 comments

This is absolutely ridiculous. If he wanted a saw with Sawstop, he should have paid the money to buy one with it!

For a comparison, a Sawstop cabinet saw intended for home woodworkers was (as of July 09) $2900. Ryobi's MOST expensive table saw that I've seen was listed at $299.

So, the guy sued a budget tool maker for not including patented technology that's included in models 10 times more expensive than the one he (probably) purchased.

And he won.

If Ryobi loses on appeal, it's going to be a crying shame.

For a (possibly terrible) analogy, it's like someone buying a small cheap car, getting in a wreck, and then suing the car manufacturer because their car isn't as safe as the highest-end luxury cars. I wish I could say it was unbelievable, but it's clearly occured.

No, the real question is why did he get money for being careless. If I put on my skates wrong as a kid, fell down and bumped by head, know what happened? My mother yelled at me for not being careful. Now, we sue the skate manufacturer.

That's a big assumption. We don't know the circumstances of the accident.

I thought Sawstop and such were only expensive because tool manufacturers weren't interested in producing them in bulk. (?)

If so, the jury probably balked at the business rationale: "We don't want to spend $10 million on a saftey feature that will raise the price of our saws by $50, because nobody will buy them."

It's still a bad precedent, but it makes more sense.

Since it seems that those who have commented on this thus far are focusing on the wrong aspects (or at least it seems so to me), heres some important context.

1) The reason why most table saw manufacturers did not adopt the "sawstop" skin contact detection technology when it first came out (easily more than 5 years ago i believe, possibly even earlier) has to do with that change being possibly legally considered an admission of liability which was previously not there, which would open the avenue for many more lawsuits

2) Accordingly, the reason why this case is a big deal is not because it opens up the window more for old injuries, but because now the manufacturers will be in the situation of needing to consider the tradeoff between cost of liability for past injuries since the introduction of sawstop, and the cost of liability for all new injuries (presumably by having all new saws have the option of the sawstop style tech, they would have no more future liability).

in otherwords, this legal ruling broke a shitty nash equilibrium

I also heard the problem with the technology was it was very finicky. For example, wet wood would cause it to discharge, which would ruin the blade and I believe damage the machine. Could be wrong though.

I don't know about damaging the machine but wet wood has a similar capacitance to our fingers and that is why it stops the blade like that.

I wonder if the system can evolve the way airbags did for cars? In the beginning airbags would go off with little provocation; now they are smart enough to realize that they should not go off at all even in a mild crash.

Here's a good video of the mechanism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mzhvMgrLE

I'm not sure there's much wiggle room in terms of "finger detection" (as others have said, conductivity of wet wood is just very similar), but perhaps the brake could be designed in a way that doesn't trash the machine every time it goes off.

There is considerably more to this story than first meets the eye. I, too, first thought 'reverse patent troll' but now I am considerably less sure.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/sawstop...

In 2002, Ryobi, which initially signed a contract with SawStop, pulled out. Manufacturers, interested at first, refused to license their device. Gass remembered they told him, "Safety doesn't sell." [...] Saws currently on the market can not be retrofitted with SawStop's device. Manufacturers would have to redesign saws, which could cause a price increase of about $150. [...]

This puts quite a different cast on things, and when you look at the whole article it's hard not to wonder if the industry colluded to put up barriers to a new entrant. I can't make up my mind, and am going to read the court transcript before I form a conclusion. As with the lady who got a big award from McDonalds for spilling coffee on herself, what seemed on the surface to be a junk lawsuit was actually much more complex, with the defendants having extensive foreknowledge and choosing not to address the issue for economic reasons.

Edit: court's opinion is not online yet, and the original complaint is too brief to warrant forming a conclusion.

This is different though, in the case of McDonalds she was not aware of the risk, whereas this guy obviously was. If people actually wanted this device then it would be for sale. When working with machinery a level of caution is required and a lot of safety devices can cause problems -- what can be cut without tripping the device, or slow work down.

But the device is for sale. I agree that power tools are dangerous, but we don't yet know the exact circumstances of the accident. The question is not so much whether the customer was aware of the risk, but whether the manufacturer was aware and chose to do nothing to mitigate it. Ryobi was at the point of signing a contract to license the technology 8 years ago and suddenly pulled out. Saying that 'safety doesn't sell', if verifiable, suggests their misgivings were economic rather than technical. Past similar cases, such as the Ford Pinto, usually go very poorly for the defendants.

This could result in an awfully big class-action lawsuit if the ruling is upheld. From the same link: According to the Journal of Trauma, an estimated 565,670 table-saw-related injuries were treated from 1990 to 2007 in U.S. emergency rooms. The vast majority involved a hand coming in contact with the blade, and about 10 percent ended in amputation.

If we estimate the average cost of an amputation in medical bills and lost future productivity at $100,000, then this would represent a $5.6 billion loss to the economy. This case is going to be fought tooth and nail, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court.

The dangers with the ford pinto problem was faulty design; they gas tank was in the wrong place. Whereas with a table saw the dangers are well known. Now if something went wrong and the safety device on the machine failed due to a defect then you might have a point. As it is, it's a saw -- it cuts things you put into it, if you put your finger in it will get cut. I don't believe it is at all comparable to the ford pinto.

Wow, this sounds like a massive underground patent-licensing play for SawStop. http://www.sawstop.com/

Another bullshit lawsuit that leads us towards a world covered in Nerf.

Why didn't he buy a saw with SawStop??

Also, I wonder if he is a professional carpenter. If he is, he would know about SawStop. If he is not, he shouldn't be using this equipment.

From what I've found checking online, saws with SawStop are multiple thousands of dollars. ($2900 for their home-carpenter, table saw version.)

Ryobi is a budget toolmaker. I'd bet that the reason he didn't buy one was Sawstop is because he decided that his chances of getting hurt were low enough to justify saving the $1-2k extra that a Sawstop saw would cost him.

Well, that was his decision. Sorry to be so cold.

If they want to force manufacturers to include this technology, legislate it.

Too bad uncle Fred didn't have a SawStop.

Nerf? It sounds like a sensible safety device to me. Who wouldn't want to keep all their fingers?

This proves what we already know - people are idiots. The dude with missing fingers is an idiot for sticking his hand in a spinning blade. The judge is an idiot for not throwing this case out and the jury is 12 idiots that found the table saw maker guilty.

My grandfather cut all four of his finger tips off in a planer and I know the only thing he thought was - "that was an idiot thing to do". If I cut my leg half-off with my chainsaw that is the first and only thing I would think of too... but so many people don't want to take any share of the responsibility and we end up with this. I will step off the box now.

American rock climber Tommy Caldwell cut off part of his index finger with a table saw in 2001. Since then, he has pulled off such notable ascents as Flex Luthor (5.14d/5.15a), climbing El Capitan all free twice in one day (VI 5.13), and the Dihedral Wall (VI 5.14a).

I guess it would be difficult for him to go back and sue everyone in sight for the lack of SawStop ruining his career as a professional climber.

I thought el cap took a week to ascend? If he did that twice in one day free that is just absurdly amazing.

It does take most people a week to ascend with aid. That being said, the less gear you carry, the faster you climb. So the moment you try to ascend something in a day, you get to leave your poop tube, portaledge, sleeping bags, food, satellite hookup to HN, and other baggage behind. This makes you considerably faster.

All that being said, climbing the nose free is astounding. Toomy and his wife at the time Beth Rodden were the third and fourth people to climb it free. Lynn Hill was the first to do it in 1993, and the first to do it in a day in 1994. In the next sixteen years only one other person pulled it off.

Her line "It goes, boys" is one of the all-time greatest statements about the ability of a woman to equal or best a man in athletic competition. Here's some footage, including her entrance into the near-mythical "changing corners" at around 0:50 or so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KlA77j6xAc

Anyhoo, Tommy doing it twice in one day is ridiculous, once on the nose and once on another route. Sick. And he did it with just nine fingertips! Maybe the guy suing should actually pay Ryobi, it might be that fingers hold you back...

Yeah. Next stop, super expensive table saws that don't cut. Three cheers for tort.

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