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‘Defective’ nail gun shoots nail through carpenter’s tongue and head, lawsuit says BY JULIA MARNIN NOVEMBER 08, 2023 9:28 AM

A CT scan of Timothy Kahae’s skull on Nov. 15, 2021, shows the nail in his head, according to the lawsuit. Complaint A California carpenter is suing a power tool manufacturer over its “defective” nail gun he says misfired and shot a nail through his tongue and into his head while he was at work.

Timothy Kualii Kahae, who is now 28, needed emergency surgery to remove the nail that was lodged in the base of his skull in an incident that left him “permanently scarred,” a complaint filed Nov. 3 in federal court says. While working as an apprentice carpenter for Plant Construction Company L.P., which is based in San Francisco, Kahae was nailing down plywood on the fourth floor of a construction site with the Hitachi Pneumatic Nailer nail gun on Nov. 15, 2021, according to the complaint. This is when the nail gun misfired and simultaneously shot out two nails — one of which ricocheted off the other nail, launching it upward and into Kahae’s tongue and skull, the complaint says.

Kahae, who “went into shock,” approached his co-workers, bleeding, to report what happened and was taken to a Stanford health clinic, where he needed emergency surgery, according to the complaint. He ultimately had to wait a day for the surgical procedure to remove the nail, repair wounds to his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and more, the complaint says.

Kahae racked up more than $400,000 in medical bills and missed out on $30,000 in wages as a result of his injuries, according to the complaint. Now, Kahae, of San Francisco, is suing the nail gun’s manufacturers, Hitachi Koki U.S.A., a Georgia-based corporation, and Koki Holdings Co., which is based in Japan, the complaint shows. He accuses them of negligence. McClatchy News attempted to reach the companies for comment on Nov. 8 and didn’t receive an immediate response.

2014 RECALL ON HITACHI PNEUMATIC NAILERS

In June 2014, the companies issued a recall of more than 25,000 of their Hitachi Koki Pneumatic Nailer nail guns, the complaint says. The recall, announced by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, included a hazard notice, saying the “nailers can jam and override the safety switch that permits only one nail to fire at a time, posing an injury risk.” In addition to 25,000 nail guns recalled in the U.S., 300 were recalled in Canada, the alert said.

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