Jones v Siemens AG

Plaintiff suffered catastrophic brain damage when he was struck by a crankshaft being carried by automated assembly line machinery at an automobile plant. He was permanently disabled and required fulltime care. Our client manufactured the industrial automation controls that governed the movement of the parts within the manufacturing cell. After 30 depositions and years of litigation, we won summary judgment for our client on the grounds that the controls manufacturer was not legally responsible for the allegedly defective programming decisions of the automation programmer. We were granted summary judgment in the trial court, which was affirmed on appeal. This was a case of first impression in New York, as applied to the duties of a computerized machinery manufacturer for the alleged errors of the downstream programmer of the computerized control.