Injury and Litigation Prevention: Theory and Practice [Hardcover]

Stanley H. Freeman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471290750 | ISBN-13: 978-0471290759 | Publication Date: June 15, 1991 | Edition: 1

Many businesses that manufacture products, invite customers into their establishments, or render a public service are unaware of the 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. Injury and Litigation Prevention is a practical guide that offers relatively simple, and often inexpensive, techniques for avoiding injuries and thereby reducing litigation exposure. This expert reference includes information on what parties to lawsuits should do to prevent precipitating injuries. 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. Injury and Litigation Prevention features:

• six methods of hazard analysis, with descriptions of applications in which they are most effective
• general business and construction industry prototype safety programs that enable managers to develop programs to fit any company’s size and type
• a listing of actual lawsuits, each with the root cause of the problem and a case description
• 79 illustrations that enhance and clarify the text, and also contain courtroom demonstration descriptions and safety analysis tips

Part I of the book discusses a number of philosophical issues on which a clear understanding of injury prevention and litigation control depends. Here, Freeman presents a systems approach to hazard identification, and examines the nature of safe practice, the responsibility for safety, the mentality of accidents, and other crucial topics. He explains the meaning of risk assessment and analysis, exploring major concepts involved with "danger," "risk," "hazard," "probability," "accident," and "harm." Part II describes in detail six methods of hazard analysis, including hazard effects and control analysis, task hazard analysis, management decision point analysis, hazard control analysis, fault tree analysis, and management oversight and risk tree analysis. Part III shows how the construction industry and general industry can organize and retain an ongoing system of accident/injury prevention. Readers will find a guide to safety and industrial hygiene staffing, a prototype safety and industrial hygiene program plan, and a blueprint for control of construction site safety. Packed with easy-to-implement, cost-efficient strategies, Injury and Litigation Prevention will be invaluable to attorneys, business and insurance executives, designers, and safety and health professionals who want to deal effectively with injury and litigation issues.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

The material in this book should enable the reader to:

1. Gather information on appropriate corrective measures for personal

injury hazards in products, facilities, construction sites, and public

and private organizations. 2. Research a product design for hazards to the user for routine and foreseeable use. 3. Research a facility (premises) for hazards in routine and foreseeable use. 4. Help prepare trial strategy for the plaintiff in a personal injury lawsuit. 5. Help prepare trial strategy for the defense in a personal injury lawsuit. 6. Assess a safety program's effectiveness, and if not effective, develop a safety program for a manufacturing or service organization. 7. Assess a construction site safety program's effectiveness, and if not effective, develop a safety program that is. 8. Develop a program to train management, engineers, and others to search out and correct product and facility hazards before the product is marketed or the facility opened. 9. Determine whether the current safety program in a public institution is adequate. 10. Determine whether the accident experience report is effective. 11. Determine whether your organization, business, or product is particularly vulnerable to litigation. 12. Effectively use one of six types of safety analysis to discover and correct incipient hazards. 13. Improve the number, type and meaning of product warnings. 14. Decide whether or not to authorize epidemiological studies, product substitution research, and improved customer warnings for a widely used product that may be harmful to users. 15. Provide a text in a graduate curriculum in safety and industrial hygiene programs, law, business, or industrial engineering. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471290750
• ISBN-13: 978-0471290759
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,926,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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