Re: product documentation liability

Subject: Re: product documentation liability
From: Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: Simon <wingman1985 -at- yahoo -dot- com -dot- cn>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:09:28 -0800

You won't find much of this anywhere, because any actions brought will not be based on the absence, incompleteness or inaccuracy of documentation, but on the product characteristic or behavior the documentation didn't adequately cover. If a product has a design flaw that makes it dangerous to be used in a certain way, documenting that danger and telling the user not to use it that way will not significantly lessen the risk of liability if a user is injured (although it may help lessen the degree a bit by putting some of the responsibility back on the user). Likewise, if the product is not dangerous but just badly designed, documenting its flaws will not lessen customer dissatisfaction because nobody is going to say, "I could have lived with this problem if it had been in the manual."

The only specifically document-related actions you'll find will be cases in which documents required by regulations were provided in a satisfactory manner, and those will mostly consist of products being denied approval for release or import until the document inadequacies were corrected.

Gene Kim-Eng


On 2/26/2013 4:35 PM, Simon wrote:

I have been browsing through Google and trying to find cases where manufacturers(or software company) is fined or cases brought against them for their inadequate or simply bad documentation because there is incidents or customer dissatisfaction involved. Are you aware of cases like this?

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product documentation liability: From: Simon

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