I assume that, in the distant past, warning notices on products served some real function to warn the consumer about the dangers of using said products. But, with the possible exception of WARNING: CIGARETTES KILL, I can’t think of any recent warning notices that had actual, credible warning value.
Most warning notices have become so generic that they appear to be nothing more than lawsuit deflectors…
[ul]
[li]The machinery used to manufacture this product may have been used to process peanuts and/or shellfish[/li][li]Playing this game for extended periods may cause epilepsy[/li][li]Operating this GPS while driving is dangerous[/li][li]Using this TV in the bathtub may cause electric shock[/li][li]Skiing is dangerous and may result in death[/li][/ul]
The cynic in me wonders if they aren’t some giant scam perpetrated on us by the legal profession and their brothers and sisters in congress but I am genuinely curious:
[ol]
[li]What are warning notices really for? [/li][li]Is there any data to suggest that warning notices serve to prevent the behaviour they warn against? [/li][li]Are there any cases where the presence/absence of a warning notice made a difference in the outcome of a lawsuit.[/li][/ol]
I read that golf courses put of signs saying they are not responsible for ball damage so people will not go after them ,even though they are insured for such damage. It keeps the suits down.
Yes. As a matter of black letter law in nearly every state, a warning notice is a way to avoid a particular kind of product liability. I don’t know whether this accomplishes the intended purpose of preventing injuries.
I’d guess that, in many cases, the net number of injuries would increase. The Peanut Warning comes to mind. I imagine the ‘may contain nuts or shellfish’ notice was useful to people with allergies but it seems that so many food products now have standard ‘may contain nuts or shellfish’ warning that any actual warning value is long gone.
Right. This is what the market predicts, basically. If it costs a company nothing to lose all of its peanut-allergy-having consumers, then it makes sense to warn them off even if there’s no real risk of a product liability suit because even an infinitesimal risk of suit will outweigh the buying power of those consumers.
I’m not really sure you can blame those companies. Perhaps the solution is federal regulation that says that the companies have to honestly assess the risk of peanuts, but they also cannot be sued if they show good faith in that assessment.
Honestly, I think the intended purpose of warnings is to prevent liability, not injuries. You design your product to prevent injuries, or at least limit them to a reasonable level, and add the warning so that you can avoid lawsuits based on misuse, or simply the normal risk of using the product. I don’t think warnings will cover manufacturing defects or design flaws that cause injury.
Any real, honest warning signs I’ve seen have to do with large machinery or industrial settings. You may never know not to step on a particular place to hoist yourself up onto a loader or not to touch those 1000 amp capacitors if you don’t know what they are. Places like saw mills and slaughterhouses have more than their fair share of spinning whirligigs of death. And who knows if that innocuous sitting space that looks good for a break won’t chew your ass up into a 2x3 foot cube.
Warnings in general allow you to design things and sell/use them without having to worry about the possibility of stupidity that you cannot avoid without either making the product unusable or unprofitable. For example: the ladder. You can design a ladder that is generally safe. You give it stabilizing bars that lock, you put non-skid pads on the feet, you make the tread non-slippery, etc. But you cannot make a standard step-ladder that is safe to stand on the top of, if by ‘safe’ you mean stable enough that a person standing on the top will not fall. Since you know that people will indeed try to stand on the top of the ladder, and thus will fall, and since you want to sell step-ladders, you place a warning on the ladder, letting users know that, if they stand on the top of the ladder, they may fall and be injured. Now, the risk shifts to the user; the manufacturer is off the hook.
So long as we insist upon strict liability for ‘defective’ products, and so long as we are very aggressive about identifying such products in our attempt to shield people from bad consequences, and so long as we wish to avoid having necessary products eliminated from the market place, we will need to rely upon such warnings as methods of risk-shifting.
A few years ago at the graduation of the school where I used to teach, another teacher gave a very funny speech in which he said that all warning labels, everywhere, should be replaced by a simply phrase…“Think briefly before using.”
I think in your examples you hit on a couple of different types of warnings. I can tell you as someone who is deathly allergic to peanuts, that i would rather have that warning and avoid the food than have to go to the hospital. That is not to say I did not used to eat those products before the warnings were implemented, but if I know there is even the slightest chance I would prefer to avoid the food…or at least be notified of that slight chance before I make the decision to risk it. So I think that is one type of warning…it can be extremely useful to some people who would otherwise have no way of knowing whether or not there wa sa chance there was a nut in their food.
Now, the other type is just stupid. Obviously skiing may result in injury or death. I think this type of warning is an attempt to avoid lawsuits.
But it seems to me that the ‘may contain nuts’ warning is put on so many products - whether the product merits it or not - that the notice has lost any warning value that it originally had.
I am in favour of warnings that actually warn but I believe that CYA warnings now constitute the majority - to the detriment of everyone.
This is based solely on my faulty memory as it relates to a tele-course that I watched a few minutes of almost twenty years ago.
The warning mostly serve to discourage lawsuits versus actually winning the ones filed. Basically, in a given situation there are things a person or business is liable for and putting up a sign saying “not me” doesn’t mean anything.
But how do you know if the nuts warning is merited? Have you inspected the processing chain at the factory? Can you give an example of a clearly invalid product warning? Like, I’m not surprised that plain M&Ms would have the warning; I think actually mix peanut chunks into the chocolate. And if you see a wall of different snack mixes by the same manufacturer, it’s not a stretch to think that the bag of chocolate covered raisins might share part of a conveyor belt with the bag of gorp, leading to good old peanut particles ending up in your nominally peanutless bag.
There are many kinds of liability for products (defective product, unsafe product, liability for improper but foreseeable use, etc.) . Some of these kinds of liability can be prevented by warnings. Others cannot. It depends on the type of liability in question.
For example, if a foreseeable improper use of the product is dangerous, a warning about that improper use can prevent liability. On the other hand, if a product is defective (i.e. mis-manufactured as opposed to mis-designed), this liability cannot be waived by warning.
One place I see this fairly often is on the back of gravel trucks. Many, perhaps most, have a sign saying “Not Responsible For Debris From Roadway” or something similar.
