Lawyer Monthly - January 2022 Edition

and warnings for the incident to ever happen. Plaintiffs also need to be careful when proposing safer alternative designs. All too often, the proposed “safer alternative designs” might look nice on paper but would not actually work in real life situations. There was one case where a container came out of the latches of a rear- loading refuse truck and ultimately killed an operator. The proposed safer alternative design was to put a sensor on the latch to make sure it was secured in place before it was lifted. However, they failed to realise the tremendous forces that are applied in the hopper area that would certainly crush and otherwise inhibit the 61 JAN 2022 | WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM EXPERT WITNESS function of the sensor. How do you communicate the nuances of these issues to your audience as an expert witness? Our reports will usually look quite different depending on the facts of the case. We always like to inspect the equipment to see how it worked and what failed, and to compare the current state with the as-manufactured state. We perform testing so that we can show how the accident would have happened and what could have been done to prevent it. When supporting the plaintiffs, we typically walk through the steps of the risk assessment process one by one and look at the different factors that the standards suggest be considered when determining probability and severity. When possible, we also like to build the safer alternative designs and show how it would work or be implemented on the equipment. On the defence side, we look at and highlight what the manufacturer did do to increase the safety of the design, and more often than not, through our testing we can highlight where the operator went against the training, ignored warnings, removed guards or even rewired the equipment to bypass a safety sensor. We always like to inspect the equipment to see how it worked and what failed, and to compare the current state with the as- manufactured state.