Highly Defensible ProductsSM

There are no absolutes in life. But just as you can move away from uncertainty and closer to confidence, you can move your product along a spectrum that improves user safety and narrows liability. For example, this occurs:

  • when you make a recall decision based upon reliable engineering analysis;
  • when you support product warnings with a hazard analysis;
  • when you control litigation by creating uniform defenses based upon the product engineering itself and supported by reliable experts and consistent legal defenses;
  • when your hazard communication program integrates current medical literature; and
  • when you construct and understand the foreseeable use of your product before it leaves the plant and reaches the user.

These steps remove user issues and improve the defensibility of the product, building strong barriers against product liability claims. More importantly, this work is not separate from improving product integrity. Rather, it relies upon product integrity.

Foreseeable Use

At the point of distribution, all manufacturers have an anticipated use of their product.  Because you were involved in its engineering and design, manufacturers also understand how a product may be misused.  Most jurisdictions charge a manufacturer with the knowledge of foreseeable use of its products, as well as the product’s foreseeable misuse.  The challenge is determining the true scope of your own product knowledge.

What is your product’s foreseeable use?  Have you given your product the benefit of an intended use statement?  How does a company capture the proper mix of legal analysis, institutional knowledge, industry knowledge, engineering input, and consumer feedback to state definitively its product’s foreseeable use?  How does a manufacturer know it has landed a reliable understanding of foreseeable use, especially when the deciding factors change from product to product?  Have you done enough?

Most likely you have all the tools you need to determine the foreseeable use of your products.  The key is pulling these tools together.  Averture can help. 

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