How Many Fingers = $25M? Ask Home Depot
posted Sunday May 16, 2010 by Jon Wurm
The type of business that Home Depot is in comes with a huge potential for high worker's compensation claims. In fact, several years ago the claims averaged $1 million per year until Michael Powell designed a device that could save countless fingers among other body parts lost and swept under the steel shelves. Powell presented the simple device and the company agreed to test it in 8 stores with incredible success that resulted in lowering claims to $7,000 the next year. Powell was willing to sell them the device for $2,000 a piece but Home Depot decided to thank Powell by giving him the finger, which they were still able to do thanks to his device. When Powell's claim on the invention was brought up at a meeting a Home Depot exec responded with,
F**k Michael Powell. Let him sue us.
Well he did and after several courtroom victories he is set to be awarded a nice $25M. The district court judge who ruled on the case had this to say,
Home Depot knew exactly what it was doing. They simply pushed Mr. Powell away and they did it totally and completely for their own economic benefit.
As if anyone else needed another reason to hate Home Depot. I'm ashamed to admit that despite my distaste for them, the desk in the software development studio here at PLuGHiTz Technologies was made from materials purchased there. Maybe it's because Lowes always seemed like the "girly" home improvement center but it could just be us. In the future when I'm looking to make home and office improvements, my business will be going elsewhere.
