The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut granted today, in large part, the Firm’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing negligence claims and claims brought under the Connecticut Product Liability Act (“CPLA”) against the Firm’s clients, including a well-known manufacturer of residential and industrial protective paints and coatings, and a leading national retailer. The Court based its decision on admissions the Firm elicited at its deposition of plaintiffs’ expert engineer, including that he had no basis to criticize our clients’ product. The Court stated “in his deposition,” plaintiffs’ expert “admitted he ‘does not criticize'” the product and based on that admission, his “testimony provides no basis for the trier of fact to conclude [the product] had a faulty design or a manufacturing defect. . . . The plaintiffs’ failure to proffer expert testimony is also fatal to their CPLA claim to the extent it is based on a failure to warn theory or negligence theory. With respect to failure to warn, the plaintiffs have failed to provide evidence that the [product] was defective without warnings. Similarly, with respect to negligence, the plaintiffs have not sufficiently shown that defendants breached a duty of care. Summary judgment is, therefore, warranted.”
