Start when the product or promise changes
A new product line, a safety-critical use, direct installation work, or an expanded warranty can alter the liability conversation. Describe what the product does, where it is used, who installs it, and what the customer relies on it to do.
Do not use a marketing phrase as the submission description. A short operational map is more useful: materials, manufacturing steps, testing, warnings, distribution, and post-sale service.
Gather contracts and quality records
Collect sample purchase orders, master agreements, specifications, warranty language, indemnity provisions, certificates requested by customers, and quality-control records. Flag obligations that are broader than the company’s ordinary practice.
Identify contract manufacturers, installers, distributors, and component suppliers. Their role may affect both the facts presented and the contractual terms that need comparison.
- Intended product use and known end markets
- Warranty, indemnity, and additional-insured requests
- Testing, traceability, and recall-response records
Read liability terms with the contract
Compare the insured product and operations description, products-completed-operations aggregate, exclusions, deductibles, territory, and defense treatment with the work actually undertaken. Product recall expense, replacing the company’s own product, and third-party injury or property damage are different questions.
A certificate is evidence of a policy; it does not change the policy. Where a contract requests specific status or wording, request the applicable endorsement and compare it directly.
Document the decision points
Keep the policy forms, endorsements, contract tracker, and records of each question asked together. Reopen the file before a new customer launch, material design change, or major distribution arrangement.
Policy wording, declarations, endorsements, and facts control. Potrero Risk can help organize the submission and compare available terms; this guide does not promise a particular result.
Separate product defect, warranty, and recall questions
A product-liability discussion is clearer when the business separates three different cost paths: repairing or replacing its own product, an allegation of third-party bodily injury or property damage, and the cost of withdrawing, inspecting, or communicating about a product batch. Those events can overlap in a real incident, but they are not interchangeable policy questions.
Create a product event log that captures serial or lot traceability, date of manufacture, component suppliers, inspection records, distribution channel, customer notice process, and the person authorized to stop shipment. This is operational evidence first; it also helps the business ask focused questions about products-completed operations, recall-related exclusions, and any specialty terms offered.
Review contract language before a new customer becomes routine
Procurement teams may use a standard agreement that contains broad indemnity, defense, warranty, limitation-of-liability, or insurance wording. Mark the clauses that survive delivery, apply to subcontractors, require a particular endorsement, or refer to a customer’s affiliate rather than the contracting entity. Those details are easy to miss in a one-page insurance exhibit.
Before signing, place the agreement beside the current declarations and relevant endorsements. If a term cannot be confirmed from the issued documents, record it as an open contract decision rather than assuming that a certificate solves it.