Who Benefits On Product Liability Laws And Insurance?
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009It may not always be a legal requirement to acquire product liability insurance if you have a company in the business of marketing a certain product. But in the long run, it may actually be a wise investment. You might entertain the worthy goal of providing well made, perfectly working, quality products, so nobody should ever have a reason to sue you to begin with. But with human error, machine malfunction and the very laws of statistics, something is bound to “give” sometime. And if you’re doing business in the UK or the European Union, then this insurance is mandatory.
One of the problems facing you is public expectation. People simply assume that all consumer products can reasonably be expected to work perfectly all the time. So they have little patience if they discover an exception. And of course, depending on how they discover it, particularly if it involves even a small injury, they can keep product liability attorneys very busy indeed. This is a litigious society. And given the high financial awards judges have granted in recent years, for minor injuries not to mention serious ones, product liability insurance could end up being your saving grace, albeit an expensive one.
What you need to do is assess your risk and decide whether you want to take out such insurance. Some of the assessment you can do on your own. For example, if you’re providing health products, the consequences of a product failure could be quite severe. Yet with printing books, well not so much. A bunch of blank pages in the middle of a book won’t be life-threatening, and an offer to replace the item free of charge will usually do. For other types of products though, you may need to talk to a professional, who can help you assess your liability insurance needs.
When choosing your consultation, look for an actual liability professional; someone who will have the risk ratings for all products pretty much at their fingertips. They’ll know where your own products fall in the risk assessment. You could speak to an insurance broker or go directly to a company that specializes in product liability insurance. Or you could talk to someone on the ground, an attorney dealing in product liability cases. Even if you do provide quality goods to your customers, you want to be absolutely certain you are protected if something goes wrong.
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