Injury and Litigation Prevention: Theory and Practice

Injury and Litigation Prevention is a practical guide that offers relatively simple, and often inexpensive, techniques for avoiding injuries and thereby reducing litigation exposure. It also presents methods by which businesses can analyze their operations to determine how to avoid injury and lawsuits, as well as methods of identifying and controlling health and safety problems. Many businesses that manufacture products, invite customers into their establishments, or render a public service are unaware of the extent to which they need to provide for the safety of the people who use their products or enter their facilities. Too often, they pay for this oversight with expensive, time-consuming litigation. Trial Lawyers and defense attorneys who do personal injury law will find this book very useful as a reference that will supply trial strategy ideas and as a check and balance for the work performed by their safety or industrial hygiene expert. Injury and Litigation Prevention features: o

six methods of hazard analysis with descriptions of application in

which they are most effective o

general business and construction industry prototype safety programs

that enable managers to develop programs to fit any company's size

and type o

a listing of actual lawsuits, each with root cause of the problem and a

case description o

79 illustrations that enhance and clarify the text, and also contain

courtroom demonstration descriptions and safety analysis tips.

From the Introduction: ATTORNEY PREPARES PRODUCT LIABILITY CASE FOR THE PLAINTIFF - During discovery the plaintiff's attorney finds:

1. The company that designed and built the baby carriage (in which the

plaintiff's child was injured) had learned of a basic defect in the brake

system whereby the brakes would fail if the product was on a hill and

also loaded with heavy packages such as food bags.

2. This knowledge had come to the company in the form of complaints

from customers.

3. The company had assumed that the standard brake design would be

adequate for this new, heavier, deluxe model baby buggy.

4. The complaining letters were not circulated to appropriate

management personnel and the letters were not filed.

5. One company manager did see two of the four letters, but he had

either forgotten to bring the matter up, or had purposely ignored them. The plaintiff was able to show the jury during trial that if the company had performed a management oversight and risk tree analysis (MORT) or a hazard effects and control analysis (HECA), they would have determined the catastrophic nature of the hazard and taken steps to correct the problem in existing as well as production models of the baby buggy. The MORT analysis would detail what systems should have been in place to properly respond to reports from the field that show product defects, and the HECA would have revealed the defects before the product was marketed. ATTORNEY PREPARES PRODUCT LIABILITY CASE FOR THE DEFENSE: A lessee fell from a scaffold that he had rented from a local rental company and was permanently disabled. He sued the rental company for damages, claiming that the scaffold was improperly maintained. During trial the rental company was able to show how they used the hierarchy of prevention (contained in this book) to eliminate the inherent instability of the scaffold by supplying outriggers. They were also able to show that the customer declined training in scaffold erection, which would have included the installation of the outriggers. RECREATIONAL SKI AREA: The owner and operator of a large (average weekend patronage, 14,000) recreational ski area wants to be certain that the ski facility is as safe as possible for his patrons. He knows that there is already a considerable investment in personnel and equipment devoted to skier safety, but he has some uncertainty about the effectiveness of their safety program. Using the chapter on management oversight and risk tree analysis (MORT) analysis he is able to develop an optimum safety program that makes the best use of existing equipment, facilities and personnel. See Figure 1-1 for a sample page from this program.