A chain that does not stop, or a nail gun that fires twice, can take a finger, a hand, or an eye in a fraction of a second. Florida gives you four years to sue the maker of a defective product. Graham W. Syfert, Esq., Of Counsel to the Soud Law Firm, reviews these cases at no charge.
Call 904-383-7448Reviewed by Graham W. Syfert, Esq., Florida Bar No. 39104, Of Counsel to the Soud Law Firm. Last updated .
If a chainsaw chain brake failed to stop the chain, or a nail gun double-fired and drove a nail into your hand, eye, or skull, you may have a Florida product-liability claim against the manufacturer. The deadline is usually four years from the injury under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes; if someone died, the wrongful-death deadline is two years under section 95.11(3)(d). A separate twelve-year statute of repose, section 95.031(2)(b), can bar claims on older tools, so the date the product was first sold matters. Two recent recalls are central to these cases: the Milwaukee M18 FUEL Top Handle Chainsaw (CPSC 26-064, October 2025) and the STIHL MSA 300 (CPSC 23-282, September 2023), both for chain brakes that do not stop the chain in time. Do this now: keep the exact tool, the chain, the bar, and the box; photograph the serial number; save the receipt; and get the medical records. Graham W. Syfert, Esq., Of Counsel to the Soud Law Firm, reviews these cases for free. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Here is the prayer for relief, up front. If a chainsaw chain brake failed to stop the chain, or a nail gun fired a nail you did not intend, the maker of that tool may owe you money. Florida lets you sue for a defective product for four years under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes. That is twice as long as the two-year deadline now imposed on ordinary negligence.
The injured person is the one to root for here. A homeowner clearing a downed oak after a hurricane. A framer on a Jacksonville job site. A weekend woodworker who trusted the brake to do its job. None of them designed the tool. None of them chose the trigger. The antagonist is the product and the company that sold it knowing the brake was slow or the trigger would double-fire.
You do not have to prove the company was careless. Florida adopted strict liability for defective products in West v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 336 So. 2d 80 (Fla. 1976). You prove the product was defective when it left the maker's hands and that the defect hurt you. Graham W. Syfert, Esq., Of Counsel to the Soud Law Firm, reviews these claims at no charge.
Kickback is the moment the saw turns on you. When the upper tip of the bar touches wood, the chain's reaction force throws the bar back toward your face and hands in a fraction of a second. A working chain brake is the last line of defense. The front hand guard trips a band that clamps the drum and stops the chain almost instantly.
The danger is a brake that does not clamp in time, or at all. Around 30,000 to 36,000 people are treated each year in U.S. emergency rooms for chainsaw injuries, and roughly one in ten of those wounds involves an amputation. Lacerations dominate, and a meaningful share strike the face and neck because that is where kickback sends the bar.
Florida sees a grim spike after every hurricane. When the power is out and the yard is full of fallen limbs, inexperienced people pick up saws they barely know how to hold. After Hurricane Sandy, a study found roughly a third of tree-related injuries involved chainsaws. After Hurricane Hugo, nearly a third of the wounds treated were chainsaw-related. A saw whose brake fails in those conditions is a product that broke its one promise.
Two recent recalls put numbers and model names to the chain-brake problem. Both saws were recalled because the brake did not stop the chain the way it should. If you owned either model, find the serial number before you do anything else.
On October 30, 2025, Milwaukee Tool recalled its M18 FUEL 12-inch and 14-inch Top Handle Chainsaws, catalog number 2826-20, including model variants 2826-20C, 2826-22T, 2826-21T, and 2826-20T. The recall is CPSC number 26-064. About 90,860 units were recalled in the United States, plus roughly 7,500 in Canada.
On the affected saws, the chain brake may not prevent the chain from moving when the brake is engaged. The affected units carry the letter "A" as the fourth character of the serial number; units with "B" are not affected. Milwaukee reported two incidents of the brake not activating, including one injury involving a lacerated finger. The saws sold from March 2023 through September 2024, at Home Depot and other outlets, for about $350 as a bare tool and about $790 in a kit with batteries and a charger. The remedy is a free repair through Milwaukee Tool.
On September 14, 2023, STIHL recalled its MSA 300 C-O battery-powered chainsaw under CPSC number 23-282, because the saw can take longer to brake than expected. About 2,800 units were affected. The recall covers serial numbers lower than 447457319.
The saws sold at authorized STIHL dealers from October 2022 through July 2023 for about $800. STIHL offered a free replacement of the brake drum and brake band. The official recall reported no injuries, but the existence of injury claims in court shows the hazard is real. A St. Petersburg man, Westley Norman Kingsbury, sued STIHL in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida over a June 14, 2023 incident in which an MSA 300 blade caught his thigh and caused an open laceration; his complaint pleads strict liability, negligence, and breach of implied warranty. That filing is one man's allegation, not a verdict, and it is offered only to show how this niche reaches the courts.
A pneumatic nail gun shoots about 37,000 people into U.S. emergency rooms each year, and roughly 60 percent of those are work-related. Most wounds are punctures to the hand and fingers. The serious ones drive a nail into an eye, a knee, or the skull. The medical literature documents dozens of cranial nail-gun penetrations, some of them fatal.
The mechanism that causes most unintended firings is the contact-trip, or "bump," trigger. With a contact trigger, the gun fires whenever the nose and the trigger are both pressed, in any order. After a nail fires, the recoil bounces the gun off the work surface; if your finger is still on the trigger, a second nail can fire where you never aimed. That is double-fire.
The federal research is clear about the fix. OSHA states the risk of a nail-gun injury is twice as high with a contact trigger as with a single-shot sequential trigger. A peer-reviewed study found that more than half of the injuries from contact-trip tools would be prevented by a sequential triggering mechanism, which requires the nose to be pressed first and then the trigger. The same study found the sequential trigger cost experienced framers under one percent of total work time. A maker that ships a contact-trip gun, or fails to warn plainly about double-fire, has chosen against the safer design that costs almost nothing.
Nail-gun cases turn on which trigger the tool used and whether the maker offered or defaulted to the safer one. The major brands all sell pneumatic and cordless framing nailers, and several offer selectable or sequential actuation.
Sequential and selectable-trigger options are sold under the Bostitch, DeWalt, Paslode, Senco, and Metabo HPT names; Metabo HPT, the former Hitachi power-tool brand, offers selectable actuation that lets the user switch firing modes. Paslode is the brand most associated with cordless gas framing nailers used in residential framing.
Nail-gun defect and double-fire claims have been brought against Hitachi, Stanley-Bostitch, Senco, Paslode, Porter-Cable, and DeWalt in various states. In November 2023, a California carpenter sued Metabo HPT alleging that a 2021 nail gun fired unexpectedly and drove a nail into the base of his skull. That suit is an allegation, not a finding, and is mentioned only to show the shape of these cases. The point for your case is narrow: identify the exact brand, the exact model, and whether the gun carried a contact-trip or a sequential trigger.
Florida product cases generally rest on three theories, and a chainsaw or nail-gun case can plead all three. Each asks a different question, and the evidence for each is different.
A manufacturing defect means this particular unit left the factory different from its design and more dangerous because of it. A brake band assembled wrong, a worn drum, a trigger spring out of spec. The recalled Milwaukee and STIHL saws fit this mold: the design called for a brake that stops the chain, and the recalled units did not. Strict liability under West v. Caterpillar means you prove the defect and the harm, not the maker's carelessness.
A design defect means the whole product line is dangerous as designed, even when built correctly. The classic example in nail guns is the contact-trip trigger when a safer sequential trigger was feasible, cheap, and known. Florida courts weigh the risk against feasible alternatives, and the federal nail-gun research supplies a ready alternative design that costs under one percent of work time.
A failure-to-warn claim says the maker did not adequately tell users about a non-obvious danger or how to avoid it. Double-fire is not obvious to a new framer. The need to keep your finger off the trigger between shots, and the recoil that causes a second fire, are exactly the kind of hidden hazard a warning must address. Where the injury happens at a workplace or a property the defendant controlled, a premises-liability theory may overlay the product claim against a separate defendant.
Get the dates right, because a missed deadline ends the case before the merits matter. For a product-liability personal-injury claim, Florida allows four years under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes. That four-year window survived the 2023 tort reform in House Bill 837, which cut the deadline for ordinary negligence to two years under section 95.11(5)(a). Product claims kept the longer four-year period.
If a chainsaw or nail-gun injury killed someone, the case is a wrongful-death case, and the deadline is two years from the date of death under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes. Do not assume the four-year product window applies when there has been a death; lead with the two-year clock.
A separate trap is the statute of repose. Under section 95.031(2)(b), Florida Statutes, no product claim may be brought more than twelve years after delivery of the product to its first purchaser, with narrow exceptions. A chainsaw or nail gun bought new years ago can be barred outright even if it just hurt you. The first-sale date controls, so date the product early.
Florida is now a modified-comparative-fault state under section 768.81, Florida Statutes, also changed by House Bill 837 on March 24, 2023. A plaintiff found more than 50 percent at fault for the injury recovers nothing. Expect the manufacturer to argue you removed the guard, defeated the trigger lockout, or ignored the manual; the answer is usually that a defective product is not excused by ordinary use.
These tools cross the state line. Coastal and rural Southeast Georgia work sites, hunting camps, and storm-cleanup crews use the same saws and nailers. Georgia law is similar in shape but different in the numbers, so where the injury happened matters.
Georgia recognizes strict product liability against manufacturers under OCGA section 51-1-11. The deadline for a personal-injury claim is two years under OCGA section 9-3-33. Georgia's products statute of repose is ten years from the first sale of the product for use or consumption, two years shorter than Florida's twelve, and Georgia courts run that clock per unit from each unit's first sale. If your chainsaw or nail-gun injury happened in Georgia, the two-year deadline and the ten-year repose period are the ones to watch.
The defendants in a chainsaw or nail-gun case are usually the manufacturer and anyone in the chain of distribution: the company whose name is on the tool, the importer, and sometimes the retailer that sold it. On a recalled saw, the recall is a starting point, not the whole case, because a recall does not by itself prove your unit failed or caused your injury.
A practice note. The single most case-defining fact is the serial number, because it tells you whether your unit falls inside the Milwaukee 26-064 or STIHL 23-282 recall and when the product was first sold for the repose analysis. Photograph it before the tool goes anywhere. The second fact is the trigger type on a nail gun; a selectable-actuation gun set to bump-fire is a different case than a sequential-only gun.
Be precise about what the law promises. Florida product law lets you hold a maker strictly liable for a defect, but it does not promise a number. Any settlement or verdict figure you read about belongs to its own facts, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Graham W. Syfert, Esq., is Of Counsel to the Soud Law Firm and reviews chainsaw and nail-gun injury cases at no charge. He holds no board certification in product liability and claims none.
If a chainsaw or nail gun just hurt you or someone you love, the first hours decide how strong the case will be. These are the steps to take, in order.
Yes. On October 30, 2025, Milwaukee Tool recalled its M18 FUEL 12-inch and 14-inch Top Handle Chainsaws, catalog 2826-20 (variants 2826-20C, 2826-22T, 2826-21T, 2826-20T), under CPSC recall 26-064, because the chain brake may not stop the chain when engaged. Affected units have the letter A as the fourth character of the serial number. About 90,860 U.S. units were recalled, and Milwaukee reported one lacerated-finger injury. If a recalled saw cut you, you may have a Florida product claim, and the deadline is generally four years under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes.
Possibly. STIHL recalled the MSA 300 C-O battery chainsaw on September 14, 2023, under CPSC recall 23-282, because the saw can take longer to brake than expected; about 2,800 units with serial numbers below 447457319 were affected. The official recall listed no injuries, but a St. Petersburg man has sued STIHL in the Middle District of Florida over an MSA 300 thigh laceration. Whether you have a case depends on your serial number, the date of first sale, and how the saw failed. The product deadline in Florida is four years under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes.
For a product-liability personal-injury claim, four years from the injury under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes. If the injury caused a death, the wrongful-death deadline is two years from the date of death under section 95.11(3)(d). A twelve-year statute of repose under section 95.031(2)(b) can bar claims on older tools measured from first sale to the first purchaser. The two-year ordinary-negligence deadline created by House Bill 837 does not shorten the four-year product window.
You can pursue a claim against the maker of any nail gun that double-fired and hurt you if you can show a defect, including a defective contact-trip design or an inadequate warning. Sequential and selectable triggers are sold under the Bostitch, DeWalt, Paslode, Senco, and Metabo HPT names. Defect and double-fire claims have been brought against several of these brands. The key facts are the exact model and whether the gun used a contact-trip or sequential trigger. The Florida deadline is generally four years under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes.
Double-fire happens with a contact-trip, or bump, trigger. The gun fires whenever the nose and trigger are both pressed. After a nail fires, recoil bounces the gun off the work; if your finger is still on the trigger, a second nail fires where you did not aim, often into a hand holding the work. OSHA reports the injury risk is twice as high with a contact trigger as with a sequential trigger, and research found more than half of contact-trip injuries would be prevented by a sequential trigger.
Yes. Chainsaw injuries spike after hurricanes because inexperienced people clear fallen trees without training. After Hurricane Sandy, roughly a third of tree-related injuries involved chainsaws, and after Hurricane Hugo nearly a third of treated wounds were chainsaw-related. Around 30,000 to 36,000 chainsaw injuries reach U.S. emergency rooms each year, and roughly one in ten involves an amputation. A saw whose chain brake fails during storm cleanup may support a product claim.
No. Florida adopted strict product liability in West v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 336 So. 2d 80 (Fla. 1976), which followed the Restatement (Second) of Torts section 402A. You prove the product was defective when it left the maker's control and that the defect caused your injury; you do not have to prove negligence. You can also plead negligence and breach of warranty in the same suit. Expect the maker to argue comparative fault under section 768.81, Florida Statutes.
Keep it. Do not return it for the recall repair, do not throw it out, and do not let anyone fix it. The tool, the chain, the bar, the magazine, the box, and the receipt are the evidence. Photograph the serial number, which tells you whether your unit is in the Milwaukee 26-064 or STIHL 23-282 recall and fixes the first-sale date for the statute of repose. Store the tool in a dry place and call a lawyer before any insurer or manufacturer asks for it.
It can be. The medical literature documents many nail-gun penetrations of the eye and skull, some fatal, and a carpenter has sued Metabo HPT alleging a nail driven into the base of his skull. Whether you have a product claim depends on the trigger type, the warnings, and how the gun fired. In Florida the deadline is generally four years under section 95.11(3)(d), Florida Statutes, and two years for wrongful death under section 95.11(3)(d). Preserve the gun and get the medical records.
Georgia law applies and the numbers differ. Georgia recognizes strict product liability against manufacturers under OCGA section 51-1-11. The personal-injury deadline is two years under OCGA section 9-3-33, not four. Georgia's products statute of repose is ten years from the product's first sale for use, two years shorter than Florida's twelve, and it runs per unit. If your injury happened in coastal or rural Georgia, the two-year deadline and ten-year repose are the ones to watch.
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