I was just reading some news reports about legal cases where people had injured themselves with defective equipment (hey, you have to read stuff like this if you write a blog about safety), and the real tragedy about all of them is that these cases are often long and drawn out, and the plaintiff doesn’t always win.

The problem is that liability isn’t always so cut and dry in these cases. You say the drill bit just plain snapped off, the company says they didn’t recommend it for that kind of wood. You say a power saw exploded (this kind of malfunction is more common than you think), they say you didn’t run a proper safety check.

The companies who put out cheap, shoddy products do eventually get their comeuppance, but they don’t take it lying down. A company is going to do everything it can to dodge a lawsuit.

So if you use a lot of construction equipment, power tools, or anything else that can seriously hurt you if it’s not up to par, what can you do to protect yourself? If you can find a good lawyer in the first place, the company would rather spend a million bucks fighting the case than a few thousand to pay for your stitches, because being found to have knowingly put out a bad product, that hits them where it really hurts; not their wallet, but their reputation.

Just look at what happened to Firestone after all those tires exploded. A product recall and bad press aren’t too high up on any CEO’s list of ways to have a good time, which is exactly why they’re always more willing to settle out of court than fight and, possibly, lose a case.

So what you really want to do is simply prevent these mishaps as well as you can. It’s so hard to get money out of a power tool company that there’s actually a field of law devoted entirely to amputation. There are two things you can do to prevent injury, even in the event of a shoddy product…

Do your research

Check out as many customer reviews as you can and look for any comments on how safe the product really is.

Practice your regular safety routine

Check a drill bit for any cracks or imperfections before inserting it, wear your goggles and hard hat, and so on. It won’t prevent every accident, but if you get hurt while not following the proper safety code, that’s going to hurt your case.

Tags: Defective equipment, Liability, Product recall, Safety code

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Due Diligence, General, OHS, Regulations, Safety, rules, safety equipment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.