Does Your Company Need Product Liability Insurance?
You may not be legally required to get product liability insurance for the things your company makes or sells. And you may think that you probably don’t need it anyway, since you’re a producer of quality products that are made well and don’t malfunction. But you should never overlook the fact that things can always go wrong, especially when you’re dealing with human beings and machines. And don’t forget that if you sell products in either the European Union or the UK, then you don’t have a choice; you must have the insurance.
One of the issues when it comes to product safety is that the public assumes that all consumer products will work perfectly all the time, without exception. When they do find an exception, living in such a litigious society, their first choice seems to be to get a product liability attorney working on a lawsuit. Once in court, it seems that judges have been granting higher and higher financial settlements in recent years, no matter how minor the injury. So you may very well need product liability insurance, and you’ll probably have to pay dearly for it too.
What you need to do is assess your risk and decide whether you want to take out such insurance. Some of the assessment you can do on your own. For example, if you’re providing health products, the consequences of a product failure could be quite severe. Yet with printing books, well not so much. A bunch of blank pages in the middle of a book won’t be life-threatening, and an offer to replace the item free of charge will usually do. For other types of products though, you may need to talk to a professional, who can help you assess your liability insurance needs.
Your best bet, while trying to decide about insurance, will be a consultation with an actual liability professional, who will know the potential risks for your own products. This will be either an insurance broker, or if you want to skip the middle-man, you might go directly to an insurance company that specializes in product liability insurance. Another possibility would even be an attorney who handles product liability cases. Whichever avenue you choose, even if you know you provide good quality merchandise, it will be worth your while to understand how to protect yourself against that one time when something might go wrong.
To have an insurance policy is to have security. But to find someone to help you is a little difficult. Rene Lacape can rescue you from your problems. He is a fine insurance agent who knows all the things you like to ask and show you how you get the best deal from it.
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