Product Liability
Legal liability for injury or damage caused by a product after it has left your premises.
Also calledProduct Liability · Products Guarantee
First thing, todayQuarantine the batch, retain samples, and pull the QC and despatch records for that lot before anything is destroyed.
- Tell the insurer now, not after the assessment.
- Admit nothing and settle nothing and pass every letter to the insurer the day it arrives.
- Every document within the time the insurer asks for it.
When you would claim
- A customer alleges injury or damage from your product
- A recall or a regulatory notice about a batch
- A distributor or buyer passes on a claim they have received
- A claim from an export market under foreign law where covered
What insurers most often rely on
- The product recalled or withdrawn without consent, where recall costs are not covered at all
- A claim arising from a territory or jurisdiction not covered
- Repair or replacement of the product itself, which most wordings exclude while covering the damage it caused
- Failure to meet a specification the business itself gave
- Notification after the policy period on a claims-made wording
On a liability claim these are opening positions. Opening positions are argued, and the insurer expects them to be.
The documents
half of it belongs to the other side11 items, and half of them are somebody else's. Get the allegation in writing early: an insurer cannot tell you what is covered until it can read what is being said against you.
- Claim form and the complaint or notice
- Batch records, QC test reports and the release certificate
- Retained samples from the batch
- Despatch and distribution records for the lot
- Product specification, labelling and instructions supplied
- Any prior complaints on the same product
- Technical or laboratory analysis of the failed product
- Supplier's records where a bought-in component is involved
- Cancelled cheque and bank details in the insured's name, for the NEFT payment
- Details of any other insurance covering the same risk
- The claim made against you, the batch it concerns, and what recall or replacement has already cost
Next
Liability Claim: The First Response
In liability, the damage is usually done in the first conversation, by somebody being decent and apologetic to a person who has been hurt.
Most often lost by: Admitting liability.
Read the limit of indemnity
No sum insured and no average clause. A liability policy is capped by its limit of indemnity, written as one figure for any one accident and a larger one for the year, with defence costs sometimes inside that limit and sometimes outside it. Which of the two it is matters more than the figure.
Filed under: Liability · Third-party and legal claims
Claims that sit next to this one
the same allegation, answered elsewherePublic Liability
harm done on your own premises
Professional Indemnity
harm done by advice rather than goods
Trade Credit
the buyer who will not pay for them
Had a notice and not replied to it yet? Report a loss or call 92514 56334.