Such is the unfortunate situation that Kurt Stuhlmacher found himself in while using a fiberglass stepladder his parents had purchased from a local Home Depot. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that Stuhlmacher may sue the corporation for his injuries.
Doctors later diagnosed Stuhlmacher with Peyronie’s disease, caused by blunt trauma to the groin area. This causes extreme pain during erection and prevents Stuhlmacher and his wife from having sex.
In 2008, while using it for the first time, Stuhlmacher says the ladder gave way beneath him. He fell, striking his groin against the ladder’s front rail. His product-liability suit attributes the ladder’s failure to faulty rivets.
In court, Stuhlmacher said that the ladder “just, like, fell out – fell out from underneath me to the left.”
An expert then reconstructed the incident.
The case was dismissed when it was first raised, due to conflicting testimony between Stuhlmacher and Dr. Thomas Conry, an accident reconstructionist with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, who was brought in to examine the sturdiness of the aforementioned rivets.
But on Wednesday, the 7th Circuit revived the case, saying that Stuhlmacher and Conry’s testimonies did not, in fact, discredit each other.
Stuhlmacher and his lawyers are re-erecting their case as we speak.
