A California state court jury delievered a defense verdict Thursday in a long-running products liability trial clearing Hitachi of all responsibility for a construction worker’s serious injuries, after a high-powered nail gun accidentally nail gun accidentally fired a nail into his brain.
The San Bernadino County jury returned their verdict two days after hearing closing statement in a trial that began last November. They rejected arguments made on behalf to plantiff Justino Montiel that the Hitachi NR83A gun had a dangerous desgin defect due to lacking a “sequential triggering” that would only allow a single nail to fire after a discrete indivudal trigger pull.
Monteil’s attroney argued to the lack of a sequential trigger caused the gun to fire upward towards his face after he accidentially dropped it in 2019 while doing framing work, leaving him with a range of severe and permentaley disabiling neurological injuries.
They sought up to $45.2 million in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages, however Hitachi, sued under the name Koki Holdings America LTD, successfully argued the accident occurred because Montiel didn’t use the gun properly and not due to any desgin defect.
Montiel’s attroney, Brian Beecher of Arash Law told CVN after the trial his team will appeal the verdict, citing a pretrial ruling that preclued evidence of prior similar accidents.
Beecher argued the older-style “contact trigger” on the NR83A posed a serious risk to workers, since keeping the trigger depressed could cause the gun to inadvertently discharge multiple nails in rapid-fire mode.
He told jurors other manufacturers sold nail guns with sequential triggers, and that a simple and relatively inexpensive recall campaign could have retrofitted the NR83A model.
“Hitachi allowed this to happen to Justino Montiel,” Beecher told the jury. “They chose to deliver the most dangerous design of their gun. Contact trigger only. Prone to violent rebounds making it extremely dangerous for inadvertent firings. They knew this was going to happen.”
The case is captioned Justino Montiel v. Koki Holdings America LTD., case number CIVSB2028102 in San Bernardino County Superior Court.
