On Wednesday, September 16, 2015, a Western District of North Carolina Federal Court jury returned a defense verdict on behalf of a Taiwanese table saw manufacturer and its U.S. subsidiary, holding that Attorney Richard Schuster’s clients were not negligent in their design of a table saw — a result that is making news across the industry.
The case, Austin v. Rexon, 1:14-cv-00066, was tried by Richard Schuster, John Ong, and Matt Lilly, and is the most recent trial in a series of cases being pursued against power tool manufacturers throughout the U.S. by a Texas-based pattern litigation personal injury firm. Two prior cases involving other manufacturers had resulted in 7-figure verdicts for plaintiffs. The firm pursuing these pattern cases has stated it has hundreds of table saw cases against various table saw manufacturers around the country, making this verdict particularly noteworthy. During closing arguments, the plaintiff’s counsel argued for a verdict of “at least $750,000” on behalf of his client.
“The result is an affirmation of the quality design and safe products power tool manufacturers bring to market at affordable prices,” indicated Schuster. “We are pleased the jurors were able to see to the heart of the matter and reached a clear result in under three hours of deliberation in favor of the companies and the product. Too often, faced with the ‘no-win’ situation of defending a product at significant expense or paying a settlement despite putting out a high quality product, companies take the safer approach of paying a claim even though the product is not unreasonably dangerous.”
For more information regarding this verdict, please see the related Law360 article entitled Jury Frees Rexon From Table Saw Injury Suit.
MWL’s product liability team features attorneys with engineering backgrounds, attorneys proficient in Mandarin Chinese, attorneys who have guided companies through product risk management and mitigation, attorneys who have counseled companies through recall issues and, of course, attorneys with decades of experience defending product liability lawsuits. MWL’s expertise and product knowledge spans industries and global communities. Attorney Schuster and our team defend manufacturers as locally as Wisconsin and as globally as Taiwan and China. Our team defends cases of any size, from “nuisance value” to $20,000,000 demands. Please contact Attorney Schuster at rschuster@mwl-law.com if you should have any questions or if we can be of service to your company.
