Last Wednesday was a watershed day for preventing power saw accidents. On Wednesday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted unanimously formulate new rules that would make power saws safer. Also on Wednesday, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $1.5 million jury verdict in favor of a worker whose hand was severely injured in a power saw accident, due to the fact that the Ryobi saw that he was using was not equipped with SawStop “flesh detection” technology.
We’ve blogged quite a bit about SawStop before. This incredible new (and old-fashioned) technology makes power saw accidents completely avoidable. But the major power saw manufacturers, companies like Black & Decker, Delta, Rigid and Ryobi, have not licensed the patented technology behind SawStop and so woodworkers, contractors and tradesman continue to lose fingers and suffer approximately 67,300 serious power saw accidents a year.
The principle behind the patented SawStop technology available in SawStop-brand saws is relatively easy to understand. Have you ever seen one of those old-fashioned touch lamps where you touch the base of the lamp and the light turns on and off? The way those lamps work is that a small electrical current passes through the base of the lamp and when your hand (which is largely water, a good electrical conductor) touches the base of the lamp, it interrupts the current and triggers the off switch. SawStop brand technology works in a similar way: the saw blade carries a small electrical current and, when that current gets interrupted, it triggers a brake mechanism that stops the blade, reducing its speed from 5,000 rpm to 0 rpm in several milliseconds.
The CPSC may or may not mandate SawStop-equivalent technology when it decides its new rules. But SawStop-type flesh detection technology is one option that CPSC is weighing. CPSC has 60 days to formulate its new rules and, during that period, will be welcoming comments from industry groups and consumers.
Regardless of whether CPSC decides to mandate the SawStop technology in all saws, product liability lawsuits will be able to continue.
On Wednesday, in Osorio v. One World Technologies, the First Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appeals court seated in Boston), granted an expected boost to those lawsuits when it affirmed a $1.5-million jury verdict in favor of a worker whose fingers were injured while using a Ryobi BTS-15 table saw.
Even though SawStop does not presently manufacture a smaller saw like the Ryobi BTS, the First Circuit held that the jury could have concluded that it was feasible to incorporate SawStop technology into light-weight portable saws, as SawStop’s founder, Steve Gass, Ph.D., testified could be done.
The First Circuit also ruled that the plaintiff counsel’s urging the jury to “send a message,” although inadvisable, was a harmless error.
To read more about SawStop and preventable power saw accidents, click here, here and here.

This blog in maintained by the Boston product liability lawyers at The Law Office of Alan H. Crede, P.C.