Greenslade: Fasteners Rarely At Fault

Jason Sandefur

Industrial Fasteners Institute technology director Joe Greenslade, who did expert witness work for about 15 years, said in most court cases “the fastener nor the supplier were truly at fault.”
“When a fastener is a component of a failure, the first assumption is that the fastener was the primary cause of the failure,” he told FIN.
“In my experience, the root cause in most fastener failures has to do with inappropriate customer fastener selection or improper fastener installation.”
Frequently compounding the issue is the use of “expert witnesses” with PhD’s but “no idea how fasteners should be selected or installed.”
Once a suit is filed it can be “very expensive and difficult to convince the plaintiff of the errors in his assumptions even when the evidence against his position is overwhelming.”
Greenslade offered this advice for dealing with an angry customer over an alleged fastener failure”
1) Deal with complaints as quickly as possible. “The longer you take to respond to a customer the angrier they get and the less likely they get to looking at the situation logically.”
2) “Bend over backwards “to resolve the issue without admitting any fastener fault to appease the customer. “A supplier can take a big hit on replacing or repairing product and still be way ahead financially if a law suit can be avoided.”
3) Gather all the information and materials you can. “Obtain broken parts, save many unused parts from the same lot for future testing, get pictures of the failure. The more supporting data and material you have the better you will be able to develop a strong defense.”
4) If sued, retain a “real” fastener expert early in the case. “This can save a lot of hassle and confusion later on.”
To help prevent lawsuits, Greenslade urged distributors to avoid guessing what a customer wants. Without a thorough description, give a range of logical choices but ” do not recommend one particular fastener.”
Joe Greenslade can be reached at jgreenslade@infast.org �2009 FastenerNews.com