1. “By agreeing not [to] employ such safer alternatives, defendant and its competitors attempted to assure that those alternatives would not become ‘state of the art,’ thereby attempting to insulate themselves from liability for placing a defective product on the market” – Ryszard Wec, victim of table saw injury

2. Wec is claiming that all of the larger power tool companies as a group have access to alternatives in saw safety, such as the SawStop technology produced by Steve Gass, but that they choose instead to avoid the technology altogether in order to deflect responsibility or liability for a product that can ultimately maim its users.

3. This is a definitional claim; The power tools companies reluctance to accept regular use of SawStop technology is an attempt to “insulate themselves from liability.”

4. It is more than reasonable to say that SawStop technology is safer for all who use it and will result in a decrease in injury lawsuits against the power tools companies. But Wec’s claim that companies aren’t employing this technology because they want to save themselves from liability isn’t entirely fair because he is unclear whether or not he means that the saws themselves are the “defective product on the market,” or if he is referring to the saws enabled with SawStop technology. If it is the former, his argument places a very negative light on the saw companies, supporting his case in court, suggesting that they care more about their success than the safety of their consumers. But if it is the latter, then he is actually somewhat supporting the stand of the power tool companies — if the SawStop saws are the “defective product,” it means that the power tool companies would have to place complete faith in Gass’s product and accept any lawsuits made against them by injured consumers for failure of the technology to function properly; this is a reasonable cause for reluctance to use the technology if they are not completely sure Gass’s product will eliminate the chance of injury.

However, he also states that Robert Bosch Tool Corp. “acting through PTI, has also actively lobbied the Consumer Product Safety Commission … to prevent the adoption of flesh detection systems as a safety standard on table saws,” which shows that not only does Bosch refuse to employ the technology, but that they also actively attempted to prevent regulations for safer technology to be required by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, supporting his original claim that they aren’t as concerned about consumer safety as they are about the continued success of their company.