Can my 100% online business be sued
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Can my 100% online business be sued
I sell and custom engrave medical alert ID jewelry.Customers buy Online and type in their medical Information to be engraved on the jewelry they choose.My question is:Even though I engrave my items exactly as the customer asked with the info they provide. Could I be sued later if say the engraving wore off and was hard for a doc to read? Or if a customer provided me miss-information and a doctor miss-understood it?
Asked on June 11, 2009 under Business Law, Colorado
Answers:
B. B., Member, New Jersey Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 14 years ago | Contributor
The question really isn't whether you can be sued, but whether a customer could win. You can be sued for wearing a brown tie with a blue suit, but that goes nowhere, of course. But a suit that has at least some on-the-surface reason behind it, even if it really isn't right, can put you through a lot of expense and inconvenience defending it. And, where a customer's health or even their life might have been lost, the stakes can be very, very high.
I'm sure you are already keeping very complete and careful records of each customer's request, so that you would be able to prove that you engraved exactly what they asked for; I doubt that you would be liable as long as you did that. If the engraving wears off, the customer is probably in a better position to know that.
One thing that I would recommend that you look into is insurance against the risk of a lawsuit. This will not only pay a judgment against you if you lose (up to the policy limits), it will also mean the insurance company will hire a lawyer to defend you.
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