Home Depot called arrogant, ordered to pay ex-Boca Raton (FL) inventor millions more

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"When a Home Depot executive was told inventor Michael Powell might have a claim against the hardware giant for stealing an invention that keeps store employees safe, his reaction was swift and vulgar.

"(Expletive) Michael Powell," the executive said. "Let him sue us."

The crass response typifies the company's attitude toward Powell, who crafted an simple, yet ingenious, way to keep Home Depot employees from slicing off their fingers while they're cutting wood for customers, a federal judge said Monday.

"Home Depot knew exactly what it was doing," U.S. District Judge Daniel Hurley said. "They simply pushed Mr. Powell away and they did it totally and completely for their own economic benefit."

Calling the company callous and arrogant, he ordered it to pay the former Boca Raton man $3 million in punitive damages. That's on top of the $15 million a jury in March said the company should pay him for stealing his so-called "Safe Hands" gadget that is now affixed to radial saws at nearly 2,000 Home Depots nationwide."

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[SpiralHawk]

1. Republicon Family Values

sheesh

[Dappleganger]

2. Damn

Hadn't heard of this one, but gives more reason to never give them any business.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. Well, well, well, it's not often that we see IP laws fulfilling their ORIGINAL purpose nowadays:

Protecting the little guy from the big guy.

Nowadays, in 99.99999% of cases, it's the other way around.

[unblock]

4. i love home depot

i go there to see a nice selection of, for example, overpriced floor tiles. the advice and the help and the decision-making is free. just don't BUY it there.

then i go online and look for other places that sell tiles. when i was in central new jersey, i found a one-mile stretch of road in philadelphia that had maybe 8 tile vendors. so mrs. unblock and i took a little trip and loaded up the trunk with tiles FROM A HOME DEPOT SUPPLIER at less than half the price!

:rofl:

home depot, at best, is a convenient but overpriced middleman.

just cut out the middleman!

[Ernesto]

5. I priced roofing materials for my @ Home Depot

The went to the roofing supply yard for a better, cheaper bill of goods. Do it often.

[Xithras]

6. Ouch. That works out to about $12,000 per saw.

I'll bet they're wishing that they'd just paid for it now!

[Hannah Bell]

12. they'll probably keep challenging the award in court. i bet.

[Uncle Joe]

7. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Scurrilous.

[Scurrilous]

13. You're welcome.

:thumbsup:

[RockaFowler]

8. Did you read some of the comments??

Some of the yahoos around here are defending Home Depot. It is incredible. They stole his invention and they refused to pay him for it. Some people were talking about Tort Reform and that now we are all going to pay more at Home Depot. Not if we don't shop there anymore . . .

[louis-t]

9. Home Depot CEO is a right-wing piece of crap.

I oughta know, I used to subcontract for them.

[Quantess]

10. Home Depot blows.

I know first hand because I briefly worked there. And, they are pretty RW. If you're going to shop at a big box store, go to Lowe's.

[Hannah Bell]

11. good for him, & fuck home sheeple.

[dsn]

14. Let me tell you about the "Safe Hands" device

From the story, Home Depot asked this man to create a special guard to keep associates from cutting their fingers off with radial arm saws. He did so, made eight of them and sent them to HD. HD liked them, offered him $1200 each for two thousand of them. He wanted $2000 each. They told him to go fuck himself and had them made elsewhere.

I see three problems here:

1) There can't be more than $200 worth of materials in one of these, and they're not hard to make--among other things, it contains half a sheet of 1-1/2" industrial melamine and a quarter-sheet of 3/4" melamine. With labor and profit, this thing should sell for NO MORE than $800--and that's only if the guy churning these out is making about a hundred bucks an hour.
2) They make the saw really hard to use for four reasons. First, the hole you stick the wood through will accept two 4x4s or one 2x12. (It's a strange shape.) Second, the roller tables that are to either side of the saw table are lower than they were on the original saw--if you're trying to cut a 16-foot 4x4 it's hard to thread the timber into the saw. Before they put this godawful thing on the saw, you could just throw the timber on the table and shove it into place. Third, the guard clogs with sawdust and wood chunks. If you need to cut less than eight inches off a board, the offcut will very likely get stuck in the guard--to get it out you've got to turn off the saw and stick your arm in after the blade stops. And fourth, they removed the measuring rail from the roller table. Now you have to mark the board, thread it in and attempt to align the blade with the mark. There's no light down where the blade is, so this is very difficult.
And 3) The root cause is the radial-arm saw is the most dangerous tool in the woodshop. They kick back, and if you aren't properly trained you won't use the saw right and you'll probably cut your thumb off. If they wanted to cut down on the injuries, replacing the radial-arms with sliding compound mitersaws would have done it far more effectively than by putting shit on a RAS. They're also far less expensive than those damned 16-inch radial-arms HD uses.

[RubyDuby in GA]

15. Awesome! I f'in hate Home Depot and especially that asshat Bernie Marcus

During an October 17, 2008 conference call, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus spoke against the EFCA, calling it "the demise of a civilization". He went on to say: "If a retailer has not gotten involved with this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to Norm Coleman and these other guys," then those retailers "should be shot; should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Free_Choice_Act

That's nothing compared to this crap:
http://www.directorship.com/bernie-marcus-warns-against-efca/


So I'm not the least bit surprised that a company that was founded by this ULTRA MEGA FLAMING ASSHAT BASTARD takes that kind of attitude towards anyone.