Rancho Santa Fe, CAThe housing explosion of the early part of the millennium caused the popularity of nail guns to rise significantly throughout the housing construction industry. Nail guns were designed to make work go faster and to help production rates of construction workers. They were designed to have the capacity to emit as many as thirty nails a minute and the ability for nails to move four hundred ninety feet per second. Nails are propelled from the gun through a compressed air system. Experts equate the nails ability to travel so quickly with that of low-grade missiles. It doesn't matter what surface nail guns make contact with they will fire whether it be into wood or body parts. For this reason wrongful death cases have been popping up throughout the construction industry. This has spurred an increase in wrongful death lawsuits. Experts such as doctors and researchers have been warning for years that the nail guns are extremely dangerous.
"The nails guns are most dangerous when they are in an automated mode known as "contact trip." To date regulatory commissions and organizations have not broached the subject of the danger of the nail guns. California's OSHA had tried to make an effort to implement safer firing of the guns, but has since been stopped. Many are complaining that the Consumer Product Safety Commission hasn't made many strides in helping the situation even after documented incidents of injuries came filtering in.
Wrongful death lawsuits have been springing up all over the country as a direct result of the injuries incurred by not only construction workers, but innocent bystanders as well. One construction worker who died as a result of a nail gun injury, now has a wrongful death lawsuit pending in the Los Angeles Superior Court from his family. Manuel Murillo had been installing paneling in a vacation home of a Rancho Santa Fe resident. While he was seven feet in the air on some scaffolding the nail gun went off and put a nail through his chest. His friend and co-worker, Salvador Cardenas, was helpless to be able to assist him. He heard Mr. Murillo yell, but by that time the damage had been done. At that point the two men rushed to meet an ambulance Mr. Murillo's wife, Brenda, had called for him. Mr. Murillo felt that he was dying so he called his wife to tell her goodbye and he loved her. By the time the two men made it to the ambulance he was not breathing.
Brenda Murillo, the surviving widow filed the wrongful death lawsuit against Hitachi-Koki who manufactured the nail gun. The lawsuit contents show that the allegation is that the nail gun was "negligently designed, defective, and of dangerous character and condition." Mr. Murillo had purchased the nail gun just weeks before his accident. His co-worker Mr. Cardenas that was present at the time of his death believes that Mr. Murillo accidentally bumped up against the gun while it was laying over the edge of the scaffold. It was at chest level when it fired the nail into his chest. The amount that Mrs. Murillo is seeking has not been disclosed. It is estimated that nail gun injuries have wracked up a total of $338 million in emergency medical visits in the United States alone.
By Delsia Hartford 
