Connecticut Supreme Court building in Hartford. Photo: Natalia Bratslavsky/Shutterstock.com

The Connecticut Supreme Court has unanimously reversed a lower court decision, which had sided with the defense in a wrongful death lawsuit about an alleged defective product.

The state's high court, in a 7-0 ruling, reversed summary judgment, which had been given to the defendants: designers and manufacturers of an excavator.

The appeal hinged on retroactivity: whether an amendment passed during the litigation applied to events that occurred before its enactment. The defense won at trial on arguments that the law was not retroactive, but the high court disagreed, and found that the plaintiff's claim was not barred by the 10-year statute of repose.

The litigation stemmed from the May 2014 on-the-job death of Daniel King, who was installing a public water main at a construction site in Windsor for his employer, King Construction, which his father owned.

King's co-worker was operating a Volvo model EC340 excavator, while he was in a trench helping to fill sand over a newly installed pipe, according to the state Supreme Court's synopsis of the case. As the operator attempted to dump the sand over the water main pipe, the bucket detached from an attachment on the excavator and fell on King, resulting in his death.

Retroactivity

King's estate and his widow, Donita, sued several designers and manufacturers of the excavator in King v. Volvo Excavators AB. The trial court granted summary judgment to the three defendants—Volvo Group North America LLC, Volvo Construction Equipment North America LLC and Tyler Equipment Corp.—agreeing with their argument that the plaintiff's claims were barred by the Connecticut Product Liability Act's 10-year statute of repose.

The plaintiffs argued that the original law created two categories of claimants: employees and nonemployees.

Employees had a 10-year window to bring claims. Nonemployees did not have that deadline, if they could show that the product was still supposed to be safe, or within its "useful safe life." The plaintiffs argued it was unconstitutional to have these two sets of criteria.

But during the case, the state passed an amendment that combined the two categories by removing the 10-year deadline for employees.

The question then became whether that new amendment applied to the King case. The lower court said it didn't, and that the plaintiff missed the 10-year cutoff. But the high court disagreed, and found that the plaintiff could bring the suit if the excavator was still supposed to be safe. In reversing the lower court, the state Supreme Court held that a 2017 amendment to the statute of repose retroactively applied to the plaintiff's claims.

The state Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower court to determine whether there is a genuine issue of material fact over whether the excavator was still supposed to be in its "safe-use" period when the injury occurred.

"Because the trial court concluded that Public Act 17-97 did not apply retroactively, it did not consider whether the defendants had met their burden of establishing that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether the harm occurred during the useful safe life of the product so as to avoid the 10-year limitation period," Justice Raheem Mullins wrote for the state Supreme Court. "Therefore, we conclude that the trial court improperly granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants in the present case."

Representing the King estate were Conway Londregan Sheehan & Monaco partner Ralph Monaco and associate counsel Eric Garofano. Neither attorney responded to a request for comment Monday.

And representing the defendants were Howd & Ludorf senior partner Mark Claflin in Hartford,  and Francis LoCoco of Husch Blackwell in Wisconsin. Claflin did not respond to a request for comment.

LoCoco said, "Volvo Construction Equipment is disappointed with the Supreme Court decision. We are in the process of review and are considering all available options."

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