Neil Barry, et al. v. Quality Steel Products, Inc., et al.

The plaintiffs brought this product liability action[fn4]
pursuant to General Statutes § 52-572m et seq. against Quality
Steel alleging that it had designed and manufactured a defective
product, namely, roof brackets, which were utilized by the plaintiffs in
the hanging of shingles, and against Ring's End, the seller of the
brackets.
The roof brackets were used as part of a structure that created a
platform on which the plaintiffs could work. To install the brackets, the plaintiffs nailed them to the roof
through three slots on the bracket. After the brackets were attached to
the roof, a plank was placed on top of the brackets, which then provided
a surface on which the plaintiffs could stand in order to shingle the
roof. Although there had been additional pipe scaffolding located around
the perimeter of the roof prior to the time the plaintiffs fell, it was
taken down before the plaintiffs' accident. After working on the planks for several hours in the morning, the
plaintiffs returned to the planking after lunch and began shingling the
roof on the right side of the building. Shortly after the plaintiffs
returned to work on the roof, the planking suddenly fell out from under
them and they fell to the ground. Almost immediately after the plaintiffs
fell, Gene Marini, the general superintendent at DeLuca, discovered one
of the roof brackets used by the plaintiffs in a distorted condition on
the ground near where they fell.

Plaintiffs were working on a roofing job in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1998 at the time of the accident. They claimed that the roofing brackets being used by their employer were defective and unreasonably dangerous in that they were not sufficient strong to carry the reasonably anticipate load. Plaintiffs sustained multiple bone fractures, a punctured lung, nerve damage and more, are permanent. After multiple surgeries, including the installation of hardware, one of the carpenters is unable to return to work and the other returned after two years on a limited basis and has limited work life expectancy.

Quality Steel's instruction label on the roof brackets suggests that
the user attach the brackets to the roof using sixteenpenny nails.
The defendants introduced evidence that some of the brackets were
installed by another DeLuca employee, Nate Manizza, using eightpenny
nails. The plaintiffs both testified that when they installed roof
brackets they used larger, twelvepenny nails. Neither the plaintiffs nor
Manizza could remember if they had installed the specific brackets that
had collapsed causing the plaintiffs to fall. Cohade testified, however, that
he saw Manizza installing the brackets in the general area where the
plaintiffs fell. There was also testimony from both the plaintiffs' and
the defendants' experts that the use of a twelvepenny nail would be
sufficient to hold the bracket to the roof and would not be causative of
the collapse of the planking that occurred in this case.

The defendants also introduced evidence, through expert testimony, that
DeLuca had violated the federal Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) regulations by failing to provide additional fall
protection for the plaintiffs while they were working on the New Canaan
Nature Center roof. The plaintiffs offered, and the jury reasonably could
have found, however, that OSHA, in its investigation of the plaintiffs'
accident, did not find any violations of roofing standards at the project
site and that the roof brackets were an acceptable method of providing
fall protection.