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By Stephanie Klein | Case Column Contributor
When Popham partner Paul Anderson first picked up the phone in 2022, he couldn’t have known he was about to spark industry-wide reform — all starting with a product few people ever think twice about: a bonded abrasive cutting wheel.
A former college classmate, now an attorney in a rural Kansas town, had called him about a consultation. A man had purchased a DeWalt cutting wheel and, on his first cut through metal, the disc exploded — severing his finger.
“I didn’t even know what a chop saw wheel was,” Paul explained when he told me the story. “But when I learned the disc had shattered on first use, I knew something wasn’t right.”
“He went to the store, bought a brand-new DeWalt wheel, and on the very first cut, the disc exploded and sliced his finger,” Paul said. “I was curious. Products aren’t supposed to just blow up like that.”
For many attorneys, this would have been the end of the story: a relatively minor injury, a tough product liability case, and an uphill battle against a major manufacturer.
But Paul didn’t see it that way. He saw a bigger opportunity.
A Product with a Shelf Life and No Expiration Date
The deeper Paul dug, the more concerning the facts became.
“These wheels are bound together by resin or glue,” he said. “What most consumers don’t know is that over time, those materials degrade — even if the disc has never been used. And there was absolutely no regulation in the U.S. requiring expiration dates on these products.”
In Europe a three-year shelf life is mandated by safety regulations. In the U.S., however, expired products were sitting on retail shelves — sometimes for five to eight years — with no way for consumers to know.
That hidden danger became the center of a consumer class action strategy.
“This wasn’t just one defective product. It was an entire product category with a fundamental flaw in how it was sold and labeled.”
From Injury to Industry-Wide Litigation
Rather than pursue a challenging and limited personal injury case, Paul reframed the issue. The real claim wasn’t just the injury — it was the economic loss suffered by consumers who had unknowingly purchased expired, potentially dangerous products.
The result was a wave of litigation across multiple jurisdictions. Over two years, Paul and his team filed four class action lawsuits and reached three additional confidential settlements. Each case alleged the same underlying theory: that major manufacturers failed to warn consumers that these wheels had a shelf life and could degrade over time, posing risks of economic loss and potential injury.
The four public settlements include:
- Tuter v. Freud America (Diablo): $1.9 million
- Lampton v. Saint-Gobain: $1.6 million
- Anderson v. Milwaukee: Up to $50-100 per customer
- Dinges v. DeWalt: $850,000
Each settlement included monetary relief for consumers and, more critically, injunctive relief: mandatory labeling changes to include expiration dates and shelf life warnings.
“These discs are cheap — $2 to $5 — but the risk is serious,” Paul says. “And when you multiply those purchases across the country, the impact is enormous.”
Building Value with Experts and Evidence
To value the economic loss and the broader impact of the labeling change, Paul and his team brought in expert Shawn Fox, CPA, from Fox Forensic Accounting, who provided detailed damage modeling.
“We argued that a product sold without a known expiration date is essentially worthless,” Paul said. “You can’t safely use it, and you can’t trust its integrity. It’s no different than buying spoiled eggs at the grocery store.”
This framing not only helped win compensation for consumers — it also set a new industry benchmark.
Impact Beyond the Settlement
The results speak for themselves:
- $5.6 million in class action settlements
- Mandatory product reform across multiple manufacturers
- Three confidential settlements in addition to four public ones
- Preservation of personal injury rights for anyone injured by the defect
Paul says the cases were structured so that consumers who received money through the class settlement still retained their right to pursue a personal injury case — should an injury occur.
The most striking outcome was the precedent set.
“With DeWalt agreeing to change its labeling, we argued that became the new standard of care,” Paul said. “And that opened the door to pursue every other major manufacturer still selling expired, unmarked products.”
Lessons in Legal Vision
What started as a small-town injury case became a multi-defendant national litigation effort — not because of the size of the initial claim, but because of the strategy behind it.
Paul’s response to an unexpected call from a friend about a faulty chop saw blade offers real lessons for attorneys looking to break into consumer class action law.
- Be curious. If something doesn’t make sense, dig into it. Those instincts can be rewarding—so don’t worry about the fact that you don’t see your peers asking the same kind of questions. You might separate yourself in exactly the way you’re hoping to by following your curiosity.
- Think bigger. Every case is an opportunity to find the pattern, not just the outlier. Is this incident the only one of its kind? Is the sum of the whole different than its parts?
- Measure value creatively. Sometimes a $5 defect is really a $5 million oversight — if you know how to frame it. Whether its from a human interest angle or a more commercial one, you can frame the harm in economic or social terms, demonstrating value on a bigger scale.
Setting a New Industry Standard
The litigation against DeWalt and others set off a shift across the U.S. power tool industry. Now, expiration dates are clearly labeled, consumers are better protected, and a once-ignored product defect is no longer hiding in plain sight.
“In law, the two most powerful tools to change corporate behavior are legislation and litigation,” Paul said. “And in this case, litigation worked.”
What began with a severed finger became a national class action victory — and a clear reminder that the law, when leveraged strategically, can create meaningful change.
Fortunately for the millions of Americans using chop saw blades, accidents are being avoided every day when these blades are used.
