product liability

Warnings and instructions are a necessary part of any safe product. Rarely is a design so safe that there are no warnings and instructions that need to be followed. On the other hand, failure to follow warnings and instructions can turn an otherwise safe product into one that is hazardous. Is it foreseeable that users will not read or follow this information? And if so, what effect does that have on the manufacturer’s potential legal liability for injuries suffered while using this product?

The purchase or sale of a company or product line can create big problems in product liability and product safety for both the buyer and the seller. Comprehensive audits should be conducted before an acquisition/sale to identify potential risks in these areas and help to clearly describe the risks assumed by each party in the purchase and sales documents.

Foreign manufacturers sometimes intentionally or unintentionally cut corners on safety and quality because they are less likely to be held liable in the U.S. for problems created by their products. U.S. manufacturers who buy from foreign companies must alter their relationships with such manufacturers to account for this possibility and enhance the safety of their products to protect themselves better if problems do occur.

How does a manufacturer comply with its duty to warn, given the number of people in the U.S. who do not read English or any language? Does the law require multilingual labels or safety symbols, and when is it a good idea to include them?

Safety management programs are necessary to help a company make safe products and monitor safety for products in use. The CPSC has provided lots of guidances and mandates over the years on what constitutes an adequate program. These guidances are potentially useful to those companies seeking to establish a CPSC-compliant safety program and should be considered as part of the program development process.

This article will discuss the basic kinds of defects that can be alleged in any product liability case, the law as it pertains to compliance with standards, and some tips on how to deal with the issue of standards compliance.

This article discusses the legal and practical issues around the duty to design a safe product and how to decide whether various safety features that aren’t always necessary must be sold as standard features or whether they can be sold separately as options.

The way you market your product can turn an otherwise safely designed product into an unsafe product that causes injury and creates liability for the manufacturer and product seller.

Product liability litigation and product safety regulatory compliance are sometimes intertwined, and this can make a bad situation worse.

This article presents the legal issues around pre- and post-sale safety improvements in products and provides recommendations to document them.