Well, two things. The first is that yes, several of the companies you listed still sell axes under those names . . .
No. The names are there but the companies went under long ago.
and even the ones who no longer do, operated for nearly a century under the same legal system.
No; they did not. There was no product liability law until the late 1950's. Until then, even 1% of fault on the part of the unjured user absolutely barred any recovery by an action at law AND the plaintiff had to prove negligence - lack of due care under the circumstances.
I'l toss Council Tool in the mix just for good measure. They just celebrated their 125th year anniversary.
I missed them since their first trademark was in 1961. They only record from before WWI shows them excluded from the 'axes" category and listed under "turpentine tools." Perhaps those were axes as well.
You might have mentioned Snow & Nealley. After laying off their seven employees who made and shipped axes and other tools in 2003 "because the company was unprofitable" and a brief gap in production, S&N had one employee making axes. Recently, they shifted to assembling axes friom forgings made in Mexico. They started as a ship's chandler in 1864 and started making axes at some point.
Now, as far as what the law should be, I'm afraid I don't see the outrage with anything that you listed. I think that a company being held liable for damages resulting from reasonably foreseeable misuse is perfectly reasonable. In fact, I am fairly certain that this same legal standard exists all over the world. It does at least in the UK.
If you are OK with McDonalds case, most Americans are not. The notion that virtually every misuse of a product is the fault of someone other than the person who misused strikes us as fairly nuts.
I am perfectly okay, and even insist that if my car explodes when it hits a poll, the manufacturer be held liable. A car that explodes during an accident (Pinto anyone?) should not be on the road.
I didn't say the car exploded, and as it happened it did not. Any car can be made safer. The incremental cost of that last 1% of safety will insure that no one will buy it. I think someone who did what the driver did in the case I cited should have some responsibility for the consequences. You apparently do not.
Again, if I end up hitting the ground with my axe while splitting wood, and the head busts apart with pieces going every each way, I think the manufacturer should be held liable. I don't think they should get away by saying that the axe was intended just for wood. Most axe users will at some point hit the ground. If the result does not comply with the industry standard, then yes, I think the company should be held liable. This of course is a very different issue from unreasonable use or just an accident.
No, axes are not made to hammer into rocks. There is no "industry standard" to that effect. I can imagine a rock-proof axe. It would not hold an edge. Probably, to be safest, would not be made of steel. Rubber would be good. Certainly not wood. Was the axe unusually brittle, as some CHINA brand axes I have seen "afterwards"? Sure. Stick it to them. (Although collecting from a company owned by the Peoples Army can be tough.) But idiot-proof? That's crazy stuff.
Nor is compliance with "industry standard" a defense in a product liability case in most states. Instead, the manufacturer is held to a 20/20 hindsight standard under which it must anticipate what a jury THINKS should have been anticipated in the way of misuse of the product for purposes, and in ways, it was not designed to handle.
I am not aware of any western country where a company would not be held liable for damages resulting from the tool failing to meet industry standards during reasonably foreseeable misuse.
Neither am I, but that is irrelveant in a product laibility case in most states. Would be in a negligence case, but why would a plaintiff's lawyer go that route when he has products liability?
As such, I don't know what that has to do with Hultafors.
Neither do I. But if I ran Hultafors, I would prefer that you not buy one of my not-rock-proof axes. No offense, but put yourself in their shoes. You want their axes to hold together when they hit that piece of basalt buried in the dirt when you fail to use a chopping block or just miss badly. They don't want a jury deciding if their idea of an axe is "unreasonable" if it can be avoided.
I fully appreciate general concerns with our legal or political system, but I think most of them are a direct result of oversimplification of both the issues and the process.
So the Delta punch press was 45 years old and had passed through several owner's hands, some unknown. At some point, someone had removed a safety device that made it impossible for the operator's hands to be in the path of the descending die. The current owner then disabled another safety device that prevented "repeating" - where the die cycles down without the operator pushing the switch. In fact, he taped down the peddle so the press constantly repeated - up and down and up and down. The operator employed by that owner lost part of a hand. The hand was in the path of the die when the press repeated. Since the employer was broke, the injured man sued the original maker of the press. The theory was that, 45 years previously, Delta should have made the press so its safety devices could not be illegally disabled (in violation of OSHA). That case also went to the jury, at considerable cost only to the manufacturer and the public.
Just what is your experience with the process?
As such, I am going to have to retire and make a note to never again mix sharp objects with the law.