4/7/2014· Product Liability
Advances in Table Saw Safeguarding-Saw Stop
Table saw accidents occur frequently, often resulting in serious accidents when the operator comes in contact with the saw blade. The difficulties in guarding table saw blades with conventional guarding techniques often leads to ineffective guards that are removed by saw operators due to their lack of function and flexibility.
1/22/2014· Product Liability
Forensic Clues: How to Survive in a Hostile Tort Reform Market
Product Liability Reform has affected many attorneys, consumers, and experts negatively while failing in its goal of greater American competitiveness. This issue of Forensic Clues is dedicated to addressing the problems of tort reform, how this affects you, and what you as an attorney can do to reduce your costs and increase your chances of a successful product liability case, assuming that the case involves a legitimate product defect.
7/31/2010· Product Liability
How Attorneys Should Choose Crate Experts
By: Sterling Anthony
An attorney involved with crate litigation might readily recognize the need for a packaging expert, yet, not be sufficiently aware of the specific knowledge and capabilities that best qualify that expert.
7/14/2009· Forensic Analysis
Stepladder Instability Testing
According to Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) accident estimates, tens of thousands of stepladder accidents requiring emergency room treatment occurred annually in the United States. Approximately 85-90% of these accidents involve the user falling from the ladder and 8-9% of these injuries are serious enough to require that the victim be admitted to a hospital. In addition to posing a severe health concern, these accidents have significant loss-of-wages and high medical expense implications.
7/14/2009· Forensic Analysis
According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), there are approximately 10,000 golf car related injuries requiring emergency room treatment in the US each year. One significant mode of injury in golf car accidents is passenger ejection, which can lead to serious injuries, especially of the head. Based on CPSC statistics, roughly 35% of golf car accidents involve a person falling out of the car. In addition to ejection accidents, at least 10% of golf car accidents involve a rollover and statistics indicate that such accidents are roughly twice as likely to lead to injuries requiring a hospital stay as non-rollover accidents.
7/14/2009· Accident Investigation & Reconstruction
There are approximately 180,000 lawnmower accidents per year. In this introductory presentation, we undertake to describe the various ways in which these accidents occur.
7/7/2009· Failure Analysis
Failure Analysis of a Broken Jam Jar
By: Dr. Thomas Read
Glass fractography is the most effective method for determining why a glass object, such as a bottle, failed. This technique consists of examining the fracture surfaces of the failure for artifacts such as Wallner lines and using them to trace the crack back to its origin. Once the origin has been identified, it can be examined in detail with a microscope to determine the cause of the failure.
7/7/2009· Failure Analysis
Failure Analysis of a Failed Ceramic Water Holding Tank on a Toilet
By: Dr. Thomas Read
The cracked tank was first inspected in the "as received" condition. In this condition it was cracked, but it was still whole. Next, the failed tank was separated by pulling it apart. This was done to expose the fracture surfaces of the main crack. This allowed for a complete failure analysis and for a determination of where the crack initiated.
7/7/2009· Design
White Paper: Reverse Engineering
By: Dr. Thomas Read
Before expending the effort necessary to reverse engineer a device or object, it must be definite that the object under study is not covered by one or more patents. This avoids a dispute over patent violations. Once it has been established that no patent coverage exists, one can use multiple techniques to reverse engineer a product. These are summarized below:
6/19/2009· Warnings & Labels
Samples of Effective Product Warnings
The Goldhaber Warnings Report: In the last issue of this newsletter, I listed the major components found in most warnings along with making several suggestions that should help improve a warning’s conspicuousness and make it more likely to gain the attention of the product’s user at the time of use. The following is an example of a warning that
by J. Nigel Ellis, PhD
by Brian Silowash, PE, CEM
by Michael T. Motley, PhD
