Re: Insteon now or wait?

[James Himmelman <donttry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert, you have way too much time on your hands coupled with a vivid
imagination. Exploding light bulbs, Nasa, Big Dig. None of these things
have anything to do with light flicker. Come on already.

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:QeCdnQSmpaDzRVTZnZ2dnUVZ_oednZ2d@xxxxxxx:

> "James Himmelman" <donttry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:Xns980BCE9043079jhimmeloptonlinenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> "Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>> > If someone's blinded, SH will be on the hook for some very big $$
>> > indeed if a smart lawyer can put the blame at their feet.
>>
>> You are really going off on the deep end here. It's one thing to
>> claim a
> bulb
>> burned out prematurely due to excessive flicker. It's completely
> ridiculous
>> to claim that a switch, even a defective one, could blow up a light
>> bulb
> in
>> the manner you seem to be implying.
>
> Unfortunately, I feel you've missed the point of the discussion.
> Would it surprise you if I gladly agree that the risk of bulb failure
> from a faulty switch is extremely unlikely?  What I won't agree to is
> that it's a *zero* possibility.  That non-zero number is all a good
> lawyer needs to drag Smarthome into any bulb injury case where a
> defective switch was involved. I think it was an incredibly risky
> business decision for Smarthome to continue selling a switch they knew
> had ANY KIND of a design defect.  If you'll allow me, I'll try to
> explain why:
>
> All it takes for a bulb to seriously injure someone is for the
> envelope to quietly separate from the base and fall to a hard surface.
>  Imagine yourself on the witness stand.  Can you say for absolutely
> sure, beyond any doubt James, that a switch with a brand new, never-
> been-tried-before design CAN'T cause a bulb to fail in ways that have
> not been seen before?
>
> How many years did the NASA experts say those foam panels just
> *couldn't* damage the shuttle?  They said it up until seven people
> died in a foam-caused accident.  It was 'ridiculous' to some that
> lightweight Styrofoam could break the space shuttle badly enough to
> cause a catastrophe. But the ridiculous became the very bitter truth
> when they did the actual testing and analysis and stopped relying on
> their "gut feelings" about what could and what could not happen.
>
> What about Boston's "Big Dig?"  If a product liability case against
> Smarthome were underway this week, a smart lawyer would remind jurors,
> through cross-examination of the witness, that highway officials were
> *certain* that those epoxied roof bolts would hold.  For every degree
> of certainty an expert expressed, opposing counsel would remind the
> jury of each and every case where experts were flat out wrong.
>
> If the expert somehow managed to claim on the stand it was ridiculous
> for a complex, new electronic switch to a cause a bulb failure, the
> lawyers would counter by asking, "Didn't maritime engineering experts
> pronounce the Titanic unsinkable before she sailed?"  The more certain
> the expert, at least in matters like this, the less credible they seem
> to jurors.  Why? Well because every juror knows that "stuff happens."
>
> Juries believe that "mistakes happen" far more readily than they
> believe the claim "mistakes could never happen."  If they show any
> signs to the contrary, the opposing counsel would cheerfully remind
> them of the all the world's Titanics, Three Mile Islands and other
> "impossibilities."  Lawyers are found of saying "never say never."
>
> More importantly, can you say, for sure, that bulb failure simply
> can't happen *without* looking closely at the switch internals, the
> schematics, the power line and wiring with tools like an oscilloscope?
>  And if you made that claim, how credible would it be without running
> such a series of tests and studying exactly how bulbs fail, whether
> normally or prematurely, when connected to Smarthome switches?
>
> If a client has been injured by a shattering light bulb connected to a
> defective switch made by WingDing then WingDing gets an invitation to
> the defendant's table. It's almost guaranteed in our legal system.
> I've seen enough civil suits to know that's how it works.  The dragnet
> is cast.  The first thing the bulbmaker would do if sued would be to
> search the net and Lexis for any lawsuits or admissions of defect by
> WingDing.  They would do so in the strong hope of  pointing the finger
> away from them and at WingDing , who they will loudly trumpet, sold
> "known bad" switches.
>
> I've seen cases where a big manufacturing concern like a bulbmaker
> will pretend to be on the co-defendants side, but before court, will
> settle out and leave the little guy hanging.  They do it both to avoid
> setting legal precedent and so that the public documents only point
> the finger at the remaining litigants like the switchmaker or the
> installer.
>
> Companies like GE and Philips have pockets far deeper than a company
> like Smarthome.  They can afford fairly big payouts to keep product
> liabilities out of the legal search engines.  Little guys can't.
> Lawyers know that as soon as even one client prevails in a product
> liability case, the floodgates are opened.  Ask Merck, the makers of
> Vioxx about that principle.  They've set aside nearly a billion
> dollars to fight off the lawsuits they know are coming now that even a
> very few clients have won big verdicts.
>
> Lawyers in a bulb injury case wouldn't be playing to electronically
> smart guys like you James.  Believe it or not, we're *both* smart
> enough to know that catastrophic light bulb failures are NOT at all
> likely to be caused by defective switches.  But lawyers work VERY,
> VERY hard to keep smart people like you OFF juries.  They have their
> best luck with retired schoolteachers and homemakers, to whom they get
> to explain the problem according to strict legal principles and rules
> of evidence.  Rules which often obscure the very truth of the matter.
>
> If you, as a potential juror, ventured your opinion of switches
> blowing up lightbulbs being "ridiculous" at voir dire, you'd be outta
> there faster than an Insteon pulse.  The truth is, by holding any
> opinion at all about what can cause bulb failures, you'd be stricken
> from the jury pool.
>
> The jury would not be allowed to consult outside sources of ANY KIND
> on the subject of light bulb failure either.  They would only be
> permitted to connect the dots they were shown in court.  If you talked
> to your wife, the juror, about your theories of bulb failure and she
> told another juror, she would be removed from the jury and very likely
> the other juror as well.  It happens EVERY day and if the jury
> contamination is bad enough, it's grounds for a mistrial.  Judges take
> outside influences very seriously and will tell a jury several times
> during a trial to not consider any external sources of information.
>
> To win their cases, lawyers LOVE to put out dots that really don't
> connect but that they are certain jurors can't help but join together
> anyway.  I believe that's the case here.
>
> If they got you on the stand, James, could you really say that a
> newly-designed, complex, multi-function light switch, connected
> electronically to all the house's other light switches, can't have
> some serious interaction where the loads are briefly subjected to
> extreme voltage spikes?  They would ask you if subjecting a light bulb
> or fuse to voltage and current far outside the normal range isn't one
> way to cause serious physical failures of those devices?
>
> Can you say for an absolutely certainty there is NO WAY for an
> electronic circuit, using any of the components in this newly
> designed, lightly-tested electronic switch, to accidentally provide
> more voltage to a lightbulb specifications allow?
>
> Could you testify knowledgeably to the potential harmful effect of any
> filament vibration induced by the switch?  Could you say for sure that
> switch couldn't cause vibrations serious enough to effect the seal
> between the base and the glass envelope?  Their are plenty of reports
> in the field of X-10 dimmers causing serious and annoying buzzing.
> You'd have to explain why buzzing happens only with electronic
> switches and why that buzzing couldn't possibly weaken the bulb.
>
> Isn't extreme overheating or vibration capable of inducing fatigue?
> Hasn't metal fatigue caused tails to fall off airplanes:
>
> http://www.aircrash.org/burnelli/ws791101.htm
>
> "at Lusaka, Zambia, in 1977, the starboard tail plane broke off and
> the aircraft fell, killing the crew of five. That accident touched off
> checks of 707s around the world, and cracks were found in the tail
> structures of 26 more of the Boeing planes."
>
> Hasn't unexpected metal fatigue causeed the hulls of WWII Liberty
> ships to crack in half?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship
>
> "During WWII, there were nearly 1,500 serious brittle fractures.
> Nineteen ships broke in half without warning"
>
> Couldn't stressing the bulb in ways the manufacturer did not envision
> cause an envelope separation?  Isn't any AC device with a capacitor
> and very little else able to produce significant voltage spikes?
>
> A smart lawyer would take you over all those hurdles and more until
> you admitted that newly designed equipment sometimes has unusual,
> never-before-seen failure modes.  If you remained intractable, they
> would paint you as the kind of engineer that allows shuttles to crash,
> ships to sink and tunnel panels to crush drivers.  It's a no-win
> situation when there's an admitted defect in a product.  That's why I
> think Smarthome screwed the pooch by not halting sales.
>
> The lawyers may conclude by getting the expert witness to admit that
> the design engineers never meant for a flicker problem to get into the
> switches but it did, anyway.  Then they will ask if some *other*
> design defect couldn't get by those same engineers as well - this one
> having to do with bulb failures.  If the expert admits to one, and not
> the other possibility, they lose credibility.  Even my second grade
> teacher could make that connection.
>
>> This whole discussion has gotten silly.
>
> I wouldn't be calling it silly if you paid an electrician to install
> 25 or so switches that you'll have now have to pay him twice as much
> to take out and put back in.  I'd be calling it angry.  I'd wouldn't
> feel comfortable with defective switches deployed throughout my house
> if they accelerate the rate of bulb burnout.   Less time between
> burnouts means more net exposure to burnouts and the possibility that
> one of those burnouts becomes a blow up.
>
> Worse, still, *something* made Smarthome decide, after ETL had seen
> the new design, to stop selling unfixed switches and to fix all the
> switches in their possession immediately.  That wouldn't me feel
> comfortable about owning older, 1st generation switches with the
> flicker defect, even if I wasn't seeing the flicker currently.  I'd be
> afraid that ETL discovered something we're not aware of, but that was
> serious enough to motivate reworking the entire inventory.  Do you
> think if Smarthome or ETL found another, more serious defect that
> they'd be singing it from their rooftops?
>
> You don't have to shatter the bulb to cause serious injury.  You just
> have to cause it to break from its base and fall on a hard surface.
> We have to remember that an electronic switch can also be a fire
> hazard all by itself if the components are not properly sized or the
> case is too small and heat can build up.  We'll know soon enough what
> changes they've made.  That's the great thing about the Internet. :-)
>
> What's "silly" about this whole affair is that SmartHome would decide
> to put themselves, the installers who use their products and their
> customers at risk for a just few months' worth of sales.  Someone's
> got their priorities wrong in upper management.
>
> In my laymen's opinion (and it is only that, I am not an attorney)
> they've exposed themselves and others to serious liability.  That
> opinion is based upon sitting through some pretty amazing trials in my
> role as a litigation support consultant.  A smart lawyer doesn't have
> to convince *you* James, that a switch with a flickering defect can
> blow up a bulb;  They have to convince *your* mother or *your* retired
> second grade teacher.  Those are the people that sit on civil juries.
>
> You can talk toroidal chokes, inductance, triacs and millihenries to
> my mother (and I'll bet plenty of other mothers who might end up as
> jurors) until you're blue in the face.  All that non-techie jurors
> will understand is that your client sold switches they learned were
> defective in March until one day in July, when they suddenly (after an
> ETL review, FWIW) decided they had better fix them ALL before selling
> even another single switch.
>
> I believe, from watching jurors get the thousand-yard stare when
> exposed to complex technical testimony, that's all the jurors will
> *ever* understand. Smarthome admitted there was something wrong with
> the switches but continued selling them for several months after they
> learned of the problem. Everything else will be yada yada yada Henry
> choked Millie.  Civil awards don't depend as much on the pure facts as
> they do a non-technical jury's interpretation of those facts.
> Judgement for the plaintiff in the amount of $500,000.  :-)
>
> If you have any doubts about the power of a jury to both connect dots
> that don't connect and to disconnect dots that do, think "OJ."
>
> --
> Bobby G.
>
>
>
>