Re: product documentation liability

[Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

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: