Liability from accidents

Scale-up from grams to 100 g and more may lead to unexpected problems. Safe operations are essential to minimize risk during scale-up with scale-up there is always increased liability from accidents, including injury to personnel, loss of equipment, delay of key deliveries, damage to a company s reputation, and more. Some companies require that safety hazard assessments be completed before any process is mn in a pilot plant others require safety hazard assessments before a process is scaled up to greater than a given threshold amount. Testing for such assessments may be conducted on... 

Furthermore, it also states that warning signs are not sufficient to relieve the construction site owner s liability from accidents. 2(4)(a) of the Occupiers Liability Act states that [where damage is caused to a visitor by a danger of which he had been warned by the occupier, the warning is not to be treated without more as absolving the occupier from liability, unless in aU the circumstances it was enough to enable the visitor to be reasonably safe . 

Similarly, corporate governance principles also establish management accountability to these financial stakeholders, and causes companies to take the pragmatic step of securing insurance coverage for losses and liabilities which could arise from accidents and other mishaps. This induces companies to maintain their safety performance at a level sufficient to convince insurers to provide sufficient coverage at... 

The second stage of the development towards risk reduction is achieved by bringing together all areas where losses arise from accidents - whether fire, security, pollution, product liability, business interruption etc. - and co-ordinating action with the aim of reducing the loss. This risk reduction strategy is synonymous with loss control. 

Baram, M. (1997). Shame, blame and liability. In A. Hale, B. Wilpert, M. Freitag (Eds.), After the Event From Accident to Organisational Learning... 

Figure 28.2 Reprinted from Accident liability—the human perspective Maycock, G., 1997 In Rothengatter, T. and Vaya, E.C. (eds). Traffic and Transport Psychology, Pergamon, Amsterdam, page 5 with permission from...

Policy makers, practitioners, and scholars from a variety of disciplines have recently embraced a new approach to risk reduction in health care—a "systems approach"—without proposing any specific reforms of medical liability law. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) placed its imprimatur on this approach in its recent reports (Kohn et al., 2000 IOM, 2001). In its simplest form, a systems approach to risk reduction in health care posits that an injury to a patient is often the manifestation of a latent error in the system of providing care. In other words, a medical mishap is the proverbial "accident waiting to happen" because the injury-preventing tools currently deployed, including medical liability law, are aimed at finding the individuals at fault rather than the systemic causes of error. Coexistence of a systems approach to error reduction and medical liability law as a conceptual framework for policy makers implies that the latter is likely to evolve in an incremental fashion as the former makes more visible different aspects of the medical error problem. 

Nuclear plant utilities are protected from nuclear accidents under the federal Price-Anderson Act, which was passed in 1957. A utility s liability for an accident is limited to 7 billion. The estimate of Chernobyl s costs exceeds 350 billion. 

We cannot infer from court decisions whether the underlying legal rules favor the defendant or the plaintiff because legal rules affecf the selection of disputes from the universe of accidents (and nonaccidents) as well as the outcome (Eisenberg 1990). That, in itself, would not be a problem if there were data about people s decisions to litigate and settle but, for the most part, trials are the only window on the liability system... 

There is another somewhat esoteric cost associated with tagging of expls, namely liability in law suits resulting from expl accidents. It is probable that plaintiffs lawyers will try to attribute accident cause to the inclusion of taggants. How courts will react to such allegations and who may be found liable is uncertain at this time. However, it is conceivable that such liability costs can be large... 

The reverse would be that insurance and other financial institutions would require demonstration of higher safety performance as a prerequisite for financing or underwriting risks. For example, in order to operate, nuclear power plants in the United States must demonstrate sufficient financial assurance to satisfy liability claims of members of the public for personal injury and property damage in the event of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Such insurance is available through the American Nuclear Insurers, which evaluates plant performance against objectives, criteria, and guidelines developed in conjunction with the U.S. NRC and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. A plant must receive a favorable report from this review before it can be insured. 

Over 80% of industrial wastes, much of which can be classified as hazardous, are disposed of in landfills. Many chemicals enter the environment directly as a result of accidents, spills, or leakage from industrial facilities and waste disposal sites. In the past, contaminated wastes were buried, burned, or chemically treated in place. These treatments are costly, have limited effectiveness, and are difficult to regulate. Landfill and in situ fixation do not destroy waste, and landfilling only changes the place of residence delaying future liability. Contamination of the environment has placed many of our vulnerable resources (e.g., groundwater, wet lands, fisheries, and agricultural lands) at risk. 

In the law of tort, including negligence, liability is fault based. It must be proved that the defendant was at fault in that he/she acted wrongfully and as a result violated a right of the plaintiff, causing harm to him/her. The requirement of fault differentiates a genuine accident from a negligent act for which the injured person can be compensated. 

The publisher, author, affiliated individuals and companies disclaim any responsibility for any injury, harm, or illness that may occur to anyone through, or by use of, the information in this book. Every effort was made to insure the accuracy of information in this book, but the publisher and author do not assume, and hereby disclaim, any liability or any loss or damage caused by errors, omissions, misleading information or potential travel problems caused by this guide, even if such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause. 

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