ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 6, 1997 TAG: 9703060045
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
Do vending machines really need warnings that tipping and shaking can cause injury if they fall?
Don't say you haven't been warned.
Visit a toy store and read the labels. Metal-tipped darts, you will be advised, can cause puncture wounds. Hockey sticks can inflict severe bodily harm. Flimsy plastic helmets offer no protection from bicycle or construction accidents. Do not tow a child, you will be told, on a sled behind your car.
And if you buy a certain Batman costume, you will see the following:
``PARENT: Please exercise caution - FOR PLAY ONLY: Mask and chest plate are not protective: Cape does not enable user to fly.''
Labels like these with increasingly elaborate and sometimes embarrassingly obvious warnings are becoming more common as product makers seek a talisman against personal-injury lawsuits.
The labels are a response to the fact that now that many dangerous products such as the Ford Pinto and the Dalkon Shield have been removed from the market, plaintiffs' lawyers are increasingly building their cases around the idea that manufacturers have not sufficiently warned customers of the risks of using their products.
Some 90 percent of product liability cases filed these days include an allegation that a manufacturer failed to warn of significant and foreseeable dangers. By contrast, two decades ago most liability suits focused on the inherent flaws of a product.
Product makers have reacted - many experts say overreacted - by pasting warnings on every imaginable product. But there is considerable debate over whether consumers heed the now ubiquitous alarms.
These are not federally mandated warnings like those found on cigarettes, liquor and prescription drugs. These are stickers voluntarily pasted on all manner of goods by the manufacturers.
Remember the initial $2.7 million judgment against McDonald's for scalding a customer? Drive through McDonald's today for a cup of coffee and the warning on the cup reads: ``Caution: Contents Hot.'' Starbucks expresses the thought more elegantly: ``Careful, the beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot.''
After a North Carolina teen-ager was crushed by a soft drink vending machine, an appellate court there ruled recently that vending machines in that state must carry warnings against rocking or tilting the device to try to dislodge a balky can.
To be sure, there are dangerous products on the market, and companies that make them often spend millions fighting tighter regulations in Washington and serious claims in the courts. And there are lots of products that can cause grievous injury when used improperly. Warnings on these are appropriate and useful, lawyers and consumer advocates say.
``When warnings are intelligent, we really do alert people to risks and to aspects of the product that people ought to know about,'' said Aaron D. Twerski, a New York legal scholar who has written extensively on the subject.
Still, asks Hildy Bowbeer, a product liability lawyer in Minneapolis, are Americans being ``warned to death?''
Roger McCarthy, a ``human factors'' engineer who studies the relationship between people and products, said warnings simply do not work.
He said he had collected more than 3,500 articles about the effectiveness of warning labels and had found not a single reliable study that documented a reduction in accidents.
``Consumers who pay attention to warnings don't get hurt in the first place, and consumers who get hurt typically aren't the ones who read warnings,'' said McCarthy, chairman of Failure Analysis Associates, a consulting firm in Menlo Park, Calif. ``They are not effective on consumer behavior.''
LENGTH: Medium: 74 linesby CNB