Lawsuit!: Reducing the Risk of Product Liability for Manufacturers

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Claims and Investigating Incidents

When a company becomes aware of an accident or injury involving their product, the in-house product liability expert needs to immediately begin an investigation. After all, having a product allegedly injure a person, start a fire, or create property damage in some other manner, is truly the ultimate quality failure of a product. Therefore if the product has such a capability, management should definitely want to know about it and react accordingly. Does the allegation appear credible? Does the company need to immediately place a hold on the product and stop production and shipping? Does the company need to reinspect, retest, or redesign the product? Does the company need to possibly recall the product?

These are the kinds of questions a company needs to address, once it has investigated an incident and the specific product in question. But first the company needs to get into the habit of investigating such incidents. It is common for companies to pass such incidents or claims on to their insurance company and let them handle the claims for them, but that is not the best practice. Companies need to take charge of such investigations in order to recognize what is happening and come to some conclusion as quickly and effectively as possible.

Having such assistance is appreciated by the insurance companies, as they would otherwise be faced with sending their own people to locations cold, and obviously they would not understand the product or what ...