Fifty-three-year-old worker died when the scaffolding that he was standing on collapsed, causing him to fall to the ground.
After the incident, the Boston Police investigated and found that the “saddle” portion of a side bracket manufactured by defendant had spread open. Plaintiff’s experts concluded that the most probable cause of the failure of the side bracket was that it became incorrectly positioned on the horizontal member of the scaffold frame in the course of normal use. In this position, the load which the side bracket could support was greatly reduced. As such, the saddle portion of the bracket failed under normal and foreseeable loads, in violation of OSHA regulations. The plaintiff’s experts had further opined that readily available design modifications, including alternate design brackets manufactured by the defendant itself, would have prevented this occurrence.
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