Man Files Suit After Fall From Defective Safety Ladder At Safety Seminar

A man has filed a personal injury suit against a safety training school, claiming that he was caught up in a ladder that was defective.

According to Joe Aremendarez, he was attending a safety training school and wearing a body harness while suspended 10 feet from the ground when he attempted to use a self-rescue ladder.

Emendates says his weight shifted, which caused the ladder to fail and leave him dangling from the safety harness with his middle finger caught in a metal safety ring.

Aremendarez filed suit against Reliance Industries, doing business as Reliance Fall Protection Industries Inc., claiming that the ladder’s stitching patterns had not accurately been tested.

According to Aremendarez, he attempted to secure the self-rescue ladder after deploying it, but his weight shifted, causing the material to fail and causing him to hang approximately 8-10 feet from the ground with his left middle finger caught in a metal safety ring.

Aremendarez claims strict liability from manufacturing defect, defective design, and failure to warn, negligence, gross negligence, and breach of warranty against Reliance.

The suit alleges negligence against Reliance for failure to adequately supervise the production, design, engineering, and production of the ladder and failure to ensure that the ladder and its component parts were manufactured with material suitable for its intended use.

According to the suit, Reliance also failed to ensure that quality control tests were properly followed and failed to accurately determine stitching patterns, UV degradation, and energy absorbing properties due to dynamic loading of the material used during the manufacturing process.