Insurance lawsuits

Erom the perspective of the Hcensee, a nonexclusive Hcense can be viewed as either a tax on the Hcensee s use of the patent or insurance against a patent infringement lawsuit. The Hcensor may want to make the technology broadly available to many parties in order to allow many parties to better exploit the technology. 

It is also becoming necessaiy to insure against factors not normally considered until recently. These include possible lawsuits for polluting the environment. The cost of insurance increases the annual total expense Af . Thus, overinsurance can lead to an unnecessaiy decrease in profitability. The management of a company must ultimately judge its own risks. 

Aformer employee of Pantasote, a defunct PVC processor in Passaic, N.J., is reported to have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, its suppliers and insurers in Essex County Superior Court in Newark, N. J. The former worker claims the firms conspired to hide health risks associated with exposure to vinyl chloride monomer. The claim is that all the VCM and PVC people knew about the danger and concealed it for 40 or 50 years, says Ron... 

Lawsuit. In today s lawsuit-prone society, sufficient liability insurance is a must. To protect your assets and your future, buy an umbrella liability policy. This policy kicks in after your car or homeowner s liability limits are exhausted. Premiums are quite reasonable. 

First of all, the argument s claim is based on the idea that doctors determine the cost of healthcare. Certainly, doctors are involved in deciding how much money they charge for their time and services however, the term healthcare means more than doctor s visits. It includes getting tests done, getting X-rays, purchasing medicine, staying in the hospital, and many other services. In today s healthcare web, full of HMOs, expensive insurance, and malpractice lawsuits, much more is involved in the cost of healthcare than where a doctor lives or how much that doctor owes in student loans. 

In general terms, product liability refers to the liability of a seller of a product which, because of a defect, causes damage to its purchaser, user, or sometimes a bystander. The origins of product liability law can be traced to cases brought before British courts shortly after the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century. Since then, an ever-increasing volume of product liability cases have been brought before the courts in industrialized countries. In the USA alone, product liability lawsuits have increased from over 2000 cases in 1975, which marked the first crisis in the product liability insurance market, to over 13 000 cases in the late 1980s (Epstein,... 

Worker s compensation programs were introduced around the start of the twentieth century in various nations. These programs are a no-fault insurance system in which an injured worker receives medical and compensation benefits regardless of the causes of the job-related accident. If the injury or illness is job related, the injured worker receives medical benefits and, if eligible, temporary compensation for loss of earning power. In some cases, the injured worker may also receive permanent compensation and job retraining. In return, lawsuits against the employer, except under very limited circumstances, are not permitted. 

Some public events trigger a sequence of lawsuits and insurance claims to gain compensation for injuries and deaths. Research the lawsuits and insurance claims that resulted from the failure of the structure covering the stage at the Indiana State Fair covered in Case 11-5b. Compile a list of claims identihed. 

Severity is the potential loss when an event occurs. Some express potential losses in human terms, such as loss of life, serious injury, serious illness, number of cancer cases or similar terms. Some express a loss in financial terms. Examples are dollar value of production interruption, cost to replace lost equipment, cost to replace facilities, or cost of medical treatment, pay compensation for those injured or increased insurance premiums. Some express loss in legal terms, such as number of claims or lawsuits and the liability incurred. For a company, a loss can be a reduction in public image or product image or lost market share. 

Officers should respond to undesirable activity. Security personnel are trained to respond to detected incidents or calls for service while on duty. They are expected to take action at such times to protect people, property, the environment, and to make the public feel safer. Officers should report activity. In the event of an incident, a report from an independent observer, like a security officer, provides important information for management. The report serves as a possible factor in changing internal procedures, the basis for an insurance claim, or as possible evidence in an arrest or lawsuit. These core competencies are necessary for proper implementation of situational crime prevention. 

Run the calculations of how much accidents cost in lost time, workers compensation, insurance costs, lost product, schedule slip, lawsuits, inefficient use of resources, downtime, etc. See Section 14.3 for more details. 

The most typical safety measurement tool is to track the number of accidents. The types of data needed to do this are costs of system downtime (and lost productivity and product or market share), equipment damaged during an accident, accident cleanup, equipment replacement, and, of course, personnel injuries and death (including medical costs, workman s compensation, and potential lawsuits). These data can be easily trended and tracked on a monthly or quarterly basis. You can then compare your statistics to national averages. The U.S. National Safety Council (many countries publish comparable information at the federal governmental level) publishes accident costs across all industries. These costs include estimates of lost wages, medical expenses, insurance administration costs, and uninsured costs. 

Griffith and Malaro highlight the need for museums to exercise a duty of care to their public. Failure to do so, in the United States of America at least, may lead rapidly to a costly lawsuit. Most museum administrations of course take particular care to ensure that access to exhibits and galleries is not impeded and that fire exits and evacuation systems are provided, in many cases to satisfy specific insurance requirements. Accidents involving visitors do occur, however (see Table 4), although the incidence rate for major injuries is thankfully extremely low. The limited survey used as the basis for Table 4... 

A driver is also supposed to fill out a preliminary accident report while at the scene once everything is secured. This report is used to gather all information about everyone involved in the accident and any eyewitnesses. A driver must record the time, place, and road and weather conditions and provide a short description of what happened, which can be discussed later in case of lawsuits and other actions. If a camera is available, a driver should take photographs of the scene to give the insurance company an idea of what took place when it reviews data at a later time. A driver must not sign anything or make any statements unless it is to the police, his or her company, or the insurance company. 

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