How are you protecting against "I wore your masks and still got sick" sort of lawsuits? Selling masks right now seems like a high-risk for these, even with meticulous attention to the supply chain.
I'm always puzzled by these "how do you deal with lawsuits" comments. Two questions:
1. Have you seen any examples of mask manufacturers/distributors being sued, either successfully or unsuccessfully?
2. How do you protect against the risk of litigation in everything else you do? For example, being sued by anyone who pays you money (customers or employers)? Their lawsuit may not be successful, but you would still have to defend against it.
IANAL; It doesn't appear that OP does any kind of QC, just extra work to say that the labeling on the masks isn't lying. I don't think the liability would be with them unless it was provable that they are lying or are tampering with the masks. They aren't putting their name on a "this won't get you sick" sticker.
On a broader note, if the burden of proof is on the accuser I have no idea how it would be possible to get a lawsuit like that of the ground in the first place. First off, how do you prove it was the mask and not a thousand other things? Also, manufacturers don't say things like "this mask will stop you from getting sick" because they know that would be a really legally stupid thing to say.
yeah, this is really tough. regardless of the merit of the claim, just having to defend against a suit sucks not only resources but just everything. the best I could do was get as much liability insurance I could to protect the LLC I created for the purpose of importing and selling the masks.
figured the reward of getting these KN95's in the hands of folks who need them other than hospitals who have their own supply chains, outweighed the risk of a suit.
we also explicitly state that the masks are for non-medical use and reference the CDC/FDA for everything.
They're N95 masks, meaning that they're 95% effective... How do you sue against something that's specifically advertised as 95% effective? You would need to do a class-action with enough sample size to power statistics...
The claim for N95 masks is not that they are effective for 95% of people, it's that they filter out 95% of small particulate matter. The remaining 5% may or may not be enough to infect anyone, or 5% of those wearing, or 100% of those wearing.
The manner in which you would make a legal claim that the product is not as advertised is to take the mask and use the same certification process the manufacturer claims to be using to test efficacy.
One can get infected by touching something and then touching their face. So how does one prove that they did not do anything that might have caused them to get infected?
