One of the posters on the Protel Forum suggested an "Errors and Omissions (E&O) Insurance Policy"... I have never seen one of these... Anyone else have experience in this area? Bill Brooks PCB Design Engineer, C.I.D.+, C.I.I. Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510 e-mail:[log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Gary Koven [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 1:26 PM To: Designers Council Forum; BrooksBill Subject: Re: [DC] Question To PCB Designers On Liability It is definitely a good idea to get liability protection, and the scope of that effort should be governed by whether you are an employee or a consultant. If you are an employee, and you live in a right-to-work state, your employer is liable, not yourself. I can say this for sure because I won a dispute many years ago in arbitration against an employer who tried to blame me and my design for a certain component failure. The right-to-work laws saved my ass. If you are an employee and you live in a non-right-to-work state, or are a consultant, you may need to protect your liability beyond the NDA and disclaimer level which Bill related. Best Regards, Gary M. Koven, C.I.D. BrooksBill <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Rusty, I think liability protection for designer/consultants is a good idea... I know that even though you are doing work as a consultant, that if you were designing a building and the building fell down.. their lawyers would come looking for you... This is a special area of interest of mine even though I am no expert in the field... I typically sign non-disclosure agreements and some of the language in them is 'suspect' when they talk about liability... I chose to put a 'disclaimer' on my invoices when I do occasional consulting work to basically absolve myself of anything they do with the data I supply to them and limit my liability to just the materials supplied... Gerbers and board data only... guaranteeing that the correctness of the design must be verified by them and payment to me is acceptance of its correctness and declaring an end to any liability I have for the correctness of the data or its use beyond that point or something to that effect... Often you as a designer know little about the application of the board you are working on if you are contracting... some things may even be part of DOD projects and they can let you work on them with limited knowledge about the design on a 'need to know basis' with a signed agreement covering their contract requirements... You may not know how the board gets used or how it will interact with other boards in a project... you are only able to work with the data they supply you. I really think it would be wise to get some guidance on this subject from a lawyer who deals in business law and contract law... It's a good subject for more research... and would help other contractors to think about their potential liability when designing boards... Thanks for bringing it up... I will repost it on the Designers Council forum for more comments from other designers in the community... They may have run into this and can add some advice on their approach to dealing with this subject.. Best regards, Bill Brooks, CID+ -----Original Message----- From: Rusty Land [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 9:29 AM To: DXP Technical Forum Subject: [dxp] Question To PCB Designers On Liability This question does not pertain to Protel but I thought it may be of interest to all PCB designers, particularly consultants. Do any of you sign agreements with your customers limiting your liability in the event of errors and omissions on your part? Are you aware of any suits being brought against PCB designers due to errors and omissions? I haven't had any problems in the years that I have been consulting but a customer recently told me they were skipping the prototype stage on a couple of my boards and going straight into production. This has caused me to look closely at liability issues. I could also see the case where someone was injured or equipment damaged due to a failure of the board. I'm trying to decide now if I should formulate such an agreement or whether it would scare off more customers than it's worth. Thanks, Rusty Land ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------