Current Issues in Warnings

Abstract

Warnings and warnings-related issues continue to be an important focal point of liti-gation in the U.S. Many personal injury cases, for example, revolve around questions associated with residual hazards in products, facilities, or user environments – and the steps the manufacturer of a product, or the parties responsible for the safe operation of a facility or environment have taken to mitigate people’s exposure to those hazards. If haz-ards are not eliminated through design and/or guarding, then warnings and other types of precautionary instructions are commonly used to alert, inform, and remind people about the hazard(s) and to tell them what they should do to avoid or at least minimize injury. A significant body of published HFE / Warnings literature over the past several dec-ades has addressed a myriad of issues associated with the proper design, fabrication, and application of warnings and warning systems. However, the continuing stream of warn-ings-related cases being litigated in courts across the country, serves as an important re-minder that warnings issues are not merely abstract and theoretically interesting topics of discussion, but are rather items of concern that can have a significant, real-world impact on the conduct of our daily lives. The four HFE forensic professionals in this panel discussion session provide different but related perspectives on warnings-related applications and case study examples drawn from their respective professional practices. These discussion topics help to provide greater insights into the ways in which warnings-related research and theoretical con-structs are translated into warnings experts’ opinions in actual court cases. The following are brief summary descriptions of each discussant’s presentation.