Products Liability :: Florida Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

This tragic products liability accident occurred shortly before Christmas in Belle Glade, Florida as our victim was operating a sugar cane harvester manufactured and sold by a large equipment company. He was employed by one of the major sugar cane harvesting concerns in South Florida.

While the victim was operating this harvester, it became jammed with sugar cane, a common and well-known occurrence for this machine. Our victim exited the operator’s cab with the harvester running, in order to dislodge the cane, as he and others have been required to do in the past. While attempting to pull the lodged cane from the machine, the victim’s right hand suddenly became caught in a adjacent drive chain. This unfortunately caused the amputation of his right thumb and the majority of his right index finger.

Our victim was driven to the emergency room at the hospital in Belle Glade by his supervisor immediately following this incident. However, there were no available trauma surgeons on staff at the hospital to perform the necessary surgery. Therefore, he was transported to the trauma center at a hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida where he underwent debridement and lavage of his wounds. Several days later a right groin flap was required to be inset on the wound site. After several more days of observation, he was released from the hospital. To this date of course, he must live without his dominant right thumb and index finger.

The victim in this case sought the assistance of Attorney Richard D. Schuler. Mr. Schuler investigated this case thoroughly and enlisted the aid of an expert safety engineer to inspect the sugar cane harvester in question. After much discussion and research, a complaint was filed against the manufacturer of the sugar cane harvester listing the following defects:

That there was no proper guarding designed into the machine to prevent the hands of the user from being caught in an adjacent drive chain of the machine;

That there was no “dead man switch” designed within accessible reach of the machine so that the machine could be turned off if an operator’s hands were pulled into the machine;

That the safety devices for stopping the machine were inoperable such that the machine would not shut off when the “stop button” was activated;

That there were no options available with the machine to prevent a human being’s hands from being dragged into the adjacent drive chain of the machine while trying to dislodge the jammed sugar cane;

That there were insufficient and inadequate warnings posted on the machine regarding its danger;

That there was no stop or kill switch to stop the machine, even after the power source was cut off, so that shutting off the power to the machine would actually be detrimental to the operator, since the operator could then not be extricated from the drive chain of the machine;

That the machine was not designed with the ability to reverse the chain so that jammed cane could be extricated without manual intervention;

That the machine was negligently designed in that frequent cane stalk jams occurred because of lack of guarding, thus necessitating manual intervention in an area where machine parts were moving.