31st Annual Product Liability Conference

Learn from experienced product safety management professionals, consulting engineers, defense and plaintiff attorneys along with a range of other professionals including state and federal judges, scientists, and information technology experts. More than a dozen presentations will be available.

Who should attend?

Product safety management and risk management professionals from industrial and commercial equipment manufacturers along with insurance providers will benefit the most. Past attendees who have stated they received great information include:

• Product safety management managers
• Risk management managers
• Product development managers
• Design engineers
• Technical writers
• Product liability underwriters
• In-house attorneys who deal with product liability

The topics and speakers below are from the 30^th Annual Product Liability Conference, September 2018.  Please check back in April 2019 for the topics and speakers presenting at the 31^st Annual Product Liability Conference.

Day 1

Risk Assessment Now: The Requirements, Benchmarks and Liability Impacts
Bruce Main, President, Design Safety Engineering
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Mr. Main will present an overview of the risk assessment process, highlights of current national and international requirements, and legal implications of documenting risks.

Preparing a Witness
Brian Hunt, Managing Principal, Hunt Law Group
Chicago

One key to a successful defense is the manner in which the manufacturer’s corporate representatives present information during a deposition and trial. Mr. Hunt will present the key considerations for preparing a witness for successfully testifying in a case.

Component Part Manufacturers vs. OEMs
Kenneth Ross, Of Counsel, Bowman and Brooke LLP
Midway, Utah

Mr. Ross will cover the legal responsibilities for component parts manufacturers and raw material suppliers and discuss who is liable in the event there are problems. Additionally, Mr. Ross will present best practices all three entities should have in place to protect themselves.

“What happens when you cross “quality management” with the Restatement of Torts?” 
Gary M. Bell, Owner, Bell Product Safety Consulting
Sylvania, Ohio

Unfortunately, product safety and liability prevention are often viewed only in terms of their legal implications and as topics best left to counsel. Mr. Bell will explain why product safety and liability prevention need to be addressed in multiple management contexts. 

Why Design, Installation, Usage and Maintenance ALL Matter
Robert R. Scheibe, PhD PE, Principal Mechanical Engineer, GT Engineering, 
Redmond, Washington

Dr. Scheibe will present a number of case studies of product failures or accidents that caused injury, death, or property loss due to missteps in design, installation, usage, or maintenance. He will emphasize the need to approach product safety management from the perspective that “everything matters.”

Day 2

The Internet of Things and its Impact on Cyber & Product Liability
H. Michael O’Brien, Attorney at Law, Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP
White Plains, New York

Mr. O’Brien will provide an in-depth overview of the internet of things (IOT) and industrial internet of things (IIOT) and why manufacturers and users should be reviewing their product’s hardware and software security protocols, documentation and update procedures.

Warnings and Instructions For Domestic and Global Markets
Angela Lambert, Head of Standards Compliance at Clarion Safety Systems
Milford, Pennsylvania

“Failure to warn” and “inadequate warnings” top product liability allegations. Angela Lambert will present key considerations on creating effective warnings for both domestic and export markets. The latest warnings technology as defined by the ANSI Z535.4 and ISO 3864-2 standards – including new safety label formats recently adopted by ISO – as well as international safety labeling requirements such as the Machinery Directive will be discussed. 

Information Accidents: What Happens When People Misuse Technology
Charles Burhans, Senior Consultant, Applied Safety and Ergonomics
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Mr. Burhans will present information regarding the unintentional use or intentional misuse of technology and/or information systems integrated into or accompanying new products. He will present potential countermeasures to reduce the unintended consequences.

Product Liability – A Plaintiff Attorney’s Perspective
John P. Scanlon, Healy Scanlon Law Firm
Chicago

Mr. Scanlon will share his insights on the role of a plaintiff’s attorney when a product causes harm. As president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and having secured several multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements, Mr. Scanlon will address how companies need to put safety in the forefront for product design and warnings. 

How Much Is Too Much:  The Danger of Overwarning
Patricia A. Robinson, PhD, Coronado Consulting Services, LLC
Sonoita, Arizona

With product liability lawsuits increasingly focusing on allegations of failure to warn, it’s tempting to make sure you include a warning for every imaginable hazard involving your product. This session will explain why that’s usually not the best idea and will offer a systematic approach to help you decide what warnings your product needs. 

Making Better Legal Product Safety Management Decisions
Chad Neuens, Esq., Neuens, Mitchell, Bonds pllc
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Day 3

Organizing for a Product Recall, Retrofit or Upgrade
Dave Ludwin, Product Liability and Risk Control Professional
Chicago

Mr. Ludwin will address the implications of a recall, retrofit or upgrade on all relevant business functions and suggest strategies to break down organizational silos to create an interdisciplinary crisis response team. He will discuss how to involve stakeholders in the development process and define the tasks necessary to investigate an incident and quickly develop a response to protect a company’s assets.

Views from the Bench
Judge James D. Peterson District Judge, United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin

Judge James D. Peterson offers his perspectives as Chief Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin on juries today, the role of courts in dispute resolution from discovery to trial, witnesses, and the role of corporate representatives and experts.

Hot Topics in Product Liability
Cal Burnton, Partner, Steptoe Johnson
Chicago

Mr. Burnton will review the legal impact of recently decided cases and topics manufacturers should be reviewing to assure they are keeping their users safe and avoiding liability.

Patricia Robinson
President PhD

Dr. Robinson brings more than 35 years experience to consulting and training in product safety, particularly in the area of warnings and instructions. She is the author of Writing and Designing Manuals and Warnings (4th edition), as well as other books and articles. Dr. Robinson has helped more than one hundred national and international companies improve their warnings and instructions, addressing safety issues in a wide variety of consumer and industrial products ranging from infant car seats to high- wall coal-mining machines.

Dr. Robinson has provided expert testimony by deposition and at trial in products liability cases involving allegations of failure to warn or failure to provide adequate instructions. She is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the ANSI Z535.6 Subcommittee

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Cal Burnton
Attorney

Cal R. Burnton is a partner in the Litigation Department at Steptoe & Johnson LLP. Mr. Burnton has tried and won numerous complex toxic tort and product liability cases, earning a national reputation for his ability to coordinate, manage, and defend mass toxic tort and complex product liability cases with a special emphasis on high-risk matters involving novel legal, scientific, and environmental theories. His clients have included leading manufacturers and sellers of products such as chemicals, health care appliances, medical devices, electrical equipment, firearms, printing presses, industrial machinery, and power tools. Mr. Burnton is a trusted counselor to his clients, advising them on issues regarding, product liability, government regulations, product safety, and related matters. Throughout the years, he has represented corporate clients in both federal and state courts in almost every state across the country. Mr. Burnton is a frequent lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has presented seminars on liability issues in Japan and the University of Warwick in England. Additionally, he has been an instructor at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy since 1999. Mr. Burnton has also been involved in law firm professional standards and ethics counseling for many years.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Brian Hunt
Managing Principal

Brian Hunt is the managing principal of The Hunt Law Group, LLC and is a trial lawyer. He has over thirty jury verdicts, in the areas of transportation, premises liability, product liability and construction liability.

Mr. Hunt is a trial lawyer for business people, with over twenty-five years of experience defending corporations and individuals. He has demonstrated skill in successfully resolving disputes at the most efficient juncture. Mr. Hunt has conducted hundreds of mediations with an extraordinary success rate.

Before attending law school, Mr. Hunt, who passed the Illinois CPA examination in 1986, had worked for a large national accounting firm. Before graduating from law school, Mr. Hunt worked in-house in the legal department of a Fortune 100 retailer.

Mr. Hunt has been elected to membership in the prestigious American Law Institute. Mr. Hunt is a frequent writer and speaker on tort defense and business litigation topics.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Chad Neuens
Attorney

Licensed to practice law in Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado, as well as several federal jurisdictions, Chad Neuens has over 20 years of civil litigation and trial experience in the areas of subrogation, casualty, insurance coverage, product liability, toxic tort, wrongful death, commercial, fire and explosion, construction, trucking, transportation, environmental liability, bankruptcy, real estate, law enforcement, professional liability and banking. He has tried numerous cases, including 31 jury trials, in both state and federal courts within Oklahoma and throughout the country.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Jeff Oelke
Program Director

Jeff Oelke oversees the Lean Operations Management Certificate offered through the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Engineering Professional Development. Mr. Oelke has more than 20 years of experience working with manufacturing companies. Prior to joining the Department of Engineering Professional Development, he was the managing member of the Continuum Management Group, LLC, Richland Center, Wisconsin, and the division manager for supplier development at Deere and Company’s Commercial and Consumer Equipment Division. Mr. Oelke possesses MS and BS degrees with concentrations in manufacturing operations and computer hardware architecture. He has been certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt by the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Kenneth Ross
Product Liability and Product Safety Lawyer

Kenneth Ross is one of the world's most experienced and well-known lawyers practicing in the areas of product safety, product liability prevention, and regulatory compliance. He is a former partner and now Of Counsel to one of the premier product liability defense firms in the U.S., Bowman and Brooke LLP.

He has been selected for inclusion in the International Who's Who of Product Liability Defence Lawyers (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017) and has been referred to by the National Law Journal as a "preventive law pioneer." Prior to entering private practice, Ken was an in-house lawyer at Westinghouse Electric and Emerson Electric where he counseled on safety and prevention issues and managed litigation.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Robert Scheibe
Principal - Mechanical Engineer

Robert Scheibe is the Principal Mechanical Engineer at GT Engineering and is one of its founding members. For the past 36 years he has investigated and analyzed numerous accidents, failures, and fires across North America involving industrial machinery, vehicles, heavy equipment, appliances and consumer products. Dr. Scheibe specializes in the analysis of product safety, particularly from the standpoint of design, maintenance, and operation. He has acted as a consultant to numerous legal, insurance, industrial, and governmental clients and has testified as an expert witness on a variety of matters involving failure analysis, accident reconstruction, fire cause determination, and pedestrian footwear/walkway design and traction.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

David Ludwin

Dave Ludwin was CNA Insurance's Products Liability Risk Control Director until his retirement in 2013. Dave has over 40 year’s loss control experience. He was a practicing field loss control consultant as well as a managing consultant responsible for developing and coordinating CNA’s product liability risk control strategy and for training over 600 professionals in product liability prevention techniques.

Mr. Ludwin began his career with the Travelers Insurance Company and by the time he left was Traveler’s Senior Liability Consultant. Dave then joined Marsh & McLennan Companies to build their product liability and ergonomics loss prevention practices. He then joined their Technical Development staff as National Coordinator, Casualty Services and was responsible for developing and coordinating 18 risk control consulting groups.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Charles Burhans
Senior Consultant

Mr. Burhans is a Senior Consultant with Applied Safety and Ergonomics, Ann Arbor, MI. His professional activities include development and evaluation of warnings and instructions and product literature, analysis of standards, accident investigation, and the development of safety training materials and product safety/integrity documentation. While at the University of Michigan, he was an Instructional Assistant for Product and Occupational Safety Management courses in the Industrial and Operations Engineering Department. Mr. Burhans is a member of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Z535.6 Subcommittee on Product Safety Information in Product Manuals, Instructions, and Other Collateral Materials. He is a Certified Product Safety Manager (C.P.S.M.) and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan in Industrial and Operations Engineering.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Bruce Main
Professional Engineer and Safety Professional PE, CSP

Bruce W. Main, PE, CSP is the President of Design Safety Engineering, Inc., an Ann Arbor, Michigan based engineering consulting firm specializing in risk assessment and safety through design. A professional engineer and certified safety professional, Mr. Main holds mechanical engineering degrees from MIT and the University of Michigan, and an MBA also from the University of Michigan. He is the chair of ANSI B11.0 Safety of Machinery, the Convener (chair) of ISO TC 199/Working Group 5 that is responsible for the international standard ISO 12100 Safety of Machinery, and a member of several industry committees on risk assessment. He is also the primary representative to the B11 Committee (machine tool industry) on behalf of the American Society of Safety Engineers.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Gary Bell
Product Safety Consultant

Gary M. Bell received his BS degree from Bowling Green State University and MS degree from the University of Arkansas. His experience includes over thirty­ five years as the in-house product safety and liability prevention manager for three corporations. In 2014, he retired from his corporate job, but continues to provide consulting services to companies and legal counsel.

Mr. Bell's career in product safety began as an off-shoot of quality assurance responsibilities. His product safety related experience includes product design, marketing, litigation support, and development of company policy and procedures. He has also been responsible for management of environmental compliance, plant safety, and workers' compensation.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

H. Michael O'Brien
Attorney at Law

Michael O’Brien is a partner in the New York Metropolitan offices of the national law firm Wilson Elser. Michael is co-chair of the Wilson Elser Product Liability, Prevention & Government Compliance practice. He is also the leader of the firm’s Internet of Things (IoT) practice. Michael’s practice is heavily focused on emerging disruptive technologies which include IoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3D manufacturing, robotics, autonomous vehicles, drones, augmented reality and nanotechnology. These emerging disruptive technologies share common vulnerabilities by virtue of their connectivity with the internet. These vulnerabilities include potential software, hardware and senor defects. There are as well serious privacy and security vulnerabilities which potentially can lead to denial of service attacks (DDoS), theft and/or destruction of personal or propriety data and even property damage, bodily injury and business interruption. These vulnerabilities can occur from both design and manufacturing defects or as a result of the deliberate action of 3rd party actors. As a result, these technologies present more complex product and cyber liability exposures that span an enormous ecosystem as the traditional lines of demarcation between business sectors and industries begin to blur and bleed over.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

Angela Lambert
Dir. of Sales & Marketing & Standards Compliance

In her role as head of standards compliance at Clarion Safety Systems, Angela Lambert is actively involved in the ANSI and ISO standards related to visual safety communication. Together with contributing to committee work, she acts as a liaison between these bodies and Clarion, bringing standards-informed expertise to clients to keep their warnings up-to-date. For nearly fifteen years, she has collaborated with Clarion’s product manufacturing and facility safety customers – as well as industry partners and advocates – on label and sign systems that can help reduce risk and protect people. In addition to designing and producing best practice labels and signs, Clarion specializes in guiding its clients through a streamlined process to implement cutting-edge visual safety communication systems in line with today’s leading safety standards. The company is a member of the ANSI Z535 Committee for Safety Signs and Colors, the U.S. ANSI TAG to ISO/TC 145 and the U.S. ANSI TAG to ISO 45001.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

James Peterson
Chief U.S. District Judge

James D. Peterson is the chief judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. He first joined the court in 2014, and has served as the court's chief judge since 2017.

Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin
Nominated by Barack Obama on January 6, 2014, to a seat vacated by John C. Shabaz. Confirmed by the Senate on May 8, 2014, and received commission on May 12, 2014. Served as chief judge, 2017-present.

Education:
University of Wisconsin, B.S., 1979
University of Wisconsin, M.A., 1984
University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., 1986
University of Wisconsin Law School, J.D., 1998

Professional Career:
Assistant professor, Department of Film, Television and Theatre, University of Notre Dame, 1986-1993
Lecturer, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin, 1994-1995
Law clerk, Hon. David G. Deininger, Wisconsin Court of Appeals, 1998-1999
Private practice, Madison, Wisconsin, 1999-2014

Other Nominations/Recess Appointments:
Nominated to U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, November 7, 2013

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

John Scanlon
Attorney

John P. Scanlon represents individuals injured by defective products and negligent practices. He is the recipient of the National Law Journal's Verdict of the Week award.

John graduated with departmental honors from Illinois Benedictine College. John attended the College of Law at DePaul University where he served on the DePaul Law Review staff. He has been admitted to the Trial Bar of the United States District Court.

John has obtained many awards and verdicts on behalf of injured individuals, including a record $24,000,000 verdict for a young man who suffered paralysis as a result of a defective product, a $21,000,000 recovery for a mother and daughter harmed by a defective minivan and a $4.6 million-dollar verdict for a 72-year-old women harmed by medical malpractice. He has also successfully pursued appeals in the Illinois Appellate Courts.

Teaching in courses starting: 09/24/2019

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