Employers can take steps which, if correctly taken, may shield them from sexual harassment liability caused by their supervisors. Employers should not only have an established sexual harassment policy, they must also make that policy known to each employee. Massachusetts law specifically requires periodic notice to each employee. Two recent court decisions have awarded considerable sums to plaintiffs, disregarding the former shield manufacturer's product warnings offered from products liability claims. To the Supreme Court of Texas and the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals, product warnings alone no longer make a product reasonably safe.
Adequate warnings are merely a factor to be considered among the other factors.
While no other court has yet adopted these rulings, they signal a new trend likely to be adopted by other courts. Why This Is Important . . . This can be a considerable shift in potential liability for manufacturers. The majority view has been that a product was not defective if it was safe when its warnings were followed. Under these rulings, however, warnings alone can no longer make a product reasonably safe.