I'm not a lawyer, but it would seem to me that this settlement with the epoxy manufacturer will be used as evidence to support the defense's cases in any future lawsuits . . . i.e., "How can you claim that my client was negligent when the company that produced the epoxy has already accepted responsibility?"
The epoxy manufacturer made and sold the product. The other defendant(s) used it in an improper manner. Other defendants came up with the completely stupid idea of a suspended ceiling made of heavy concrete slabs.
Think of the Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island. There you had plaintiffs argue: improper use of pyrotechnics; manufacture of flammable foam; improper use/installation of flammable foam; improper exists; no fire suppression system, etc.
The idea that concurrent causes do come together to cause only one unified injury, however, is accounted for by an offset against any jury award by prior settlements received from other defendants that I discussed above.
This seems so strange to me. I work in for an A&E/CE firm and there is a process in place so that the parties cover themselves involving all sorts of liability.
1) The contractor isn’t going to purchase the epoxy if the engineers don’t approve the submittals.
2) The expoy manufacturer isn’t going to supply the contractor unless the contractor orders the epoxy.
3) The client isn’t going to approve the design unless the engineers provide detail drawings and calculations showing the fitness of the design,
4)The contractor isn’t going to build it unless the drawing is stamoed and signed.
Where did the process fail here?