There was a recall on the lower control arms. You should be able to find out about that on this forum or any others.
The front Vertical bolt doesn't seem to have enough room to slide out far enough to pull the control arm out. Unfortunately, the factory service manual doesn't suggest any special steps, it just says to remove the forward lower suspension arm mounting nut and bolt.Upon further investigation, it appears the transmission was replaced 4k miles ago. The opposite (left) lower control arm was replaced at the same time. Quite possibly the lower control arms are coming out during the tranny removal no matter what. So it appears the the right strut bolts were not properly tightened during this process or during the subsequent alignment.
So probably not a manufacturing error, but a service error.