Odd info, sounds like it wasn't so much a safety issue as it was an ignorant operator issue.
Maybe.
When wife and I bought our first home, the previous owner had an old Delta table saw/jointer in the basement that he didn't intend to take with him. Several people had expressed interest in it, but Fred said that he wanted to give the buyer of the home 'first refusal' to buy the saw. I think that what he was really saying was that it weighed a ton, and he didn't want to have to deal with getting it out of the basement. So I bought it, and still have it - and when we moved to a new house a few years ago, it took four guys to muscle that machine up the stairs. So Fred was probably smart afterall!
Anyway - today, that saw is at least 50 years old and I'm still using it. The 1/2hP motor that drives the saw/jointer is attached to a block of wood that is screwed to a heavy metal shelf on the base of the saw. I'm convinced that at some point the motor failed, and the previous owner replaced it. Fred had worked for GE, and the motor is a generic GE motor; in those days, GE had an 'employee store' that sold various products, including generic fractional horsepower motors, to employees at attractive prices, which reinforces the theory that the motor is a replacement.
I've come to understand that the saw is dramatically underpowered - that 1/2hP motor is just too small for the work that the saw can do - and it's very common for the 'Klixon' thermal overload protector at the end of the motor housing to pop when I stress the saw by cutting thick, hard wood. The purpose of that device is to prevent the motor from dangerously overheating if it is overloaded. When that happens, I know that I have to let the motor cool down, and then press the button to reset the Klixon.
So that begs the question - does the motor in the Porter Cable saw have a similar protective device? If not, or if it does but the motor is still able to overheat because the protective device is not properly sized relative to the actual thermal characteristics of the motor, then there is a design flaw that is a safety issue.