Litigation/Expert Witness Services/Incident Investigation

An unfortunate truth is that people get hurt while they are using or working with products, machinery, equipment, facilities, and sometimes simply as by-standers. Sometimes the occurrence involves damage to property rather than harm to an individual. 

We believe that no individual or company wants to see harm occur in the commercial and industrial world. We work with companies all the time to help prevent harm. Nonetheless, incidents occur where people get hurt or property is damaged.

Through the years I’ve seen situations where plaintiffs try to work the legal system to recover money to which they are not entitled due to dishonesty or shirking responsibility for their own actions. I’ve also seen companies who have made errors that resulted in harm and behaved very poorly trying to avoid taking responsibility for their errors. However, most of the litigation cases fall somewhere in between. 

We try to maintain a balanced view and bring an independent analysis to the legal cases in which I am involved. The general approach I apply is rooted in the risk assessment process – looking at hazards and various risk reduction measures to determine if acceptable risk is or is not achieved. I have had the opportunity to successfully apply this methodology in a wide variety of cases, for plaintiffs and defendant companies.

The lessons learned from incidents and litigation experiences need to be cycled back to engineers and companies so that risk reduction measures can be developed to avoid repeat occurrences. The work dse does in developing industry safety standards, ongoing improvements to our designsafe® software, and our training services and products all focus on preventing incidents.

To the extent that we can assist you in reducing risk, or defending or pursuing litigation, we will be happy to assist within our areas of expertise. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your project or situation and encourage you to call us.