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Imported electronic downlighters and ongoing safety responsibility?

davebullockmbe

Hi,

Where do I find (and who do I speak to) to establish who's responsibility it is once an electronic item is obsolete but is still in thousands of homes and offices?

I was asked to repair an LED downlighter and driver which had developed an strange fault. My client has over 100 of these downlighters in his property and had seven (7) displaying the same fault.

The cost of total replacement would be very high and so he asked for my help.

I eventually established the fault (an aged 1M Ohm resistor) which when replaced returned the downlighter to normal operation.

However, in my testing to find the fault I carried out some 'load' testing and found that in certain overload conditions the switching FET became extremely hot and looked like it would lead to the destruction of the driver and possible fire?

Where do I find out what tests would have been carried out on this specific CE & SELV marked item?

Were tests required to be carried out at ALL levels of overload?

As this item has now been replaced with an updated version, I doubt the Chinese manufacturer (or well known UK lighting distributor) will be willing to engage in any conversation that may lead to liability!

This item may be recently become obsolete, but is still 'out there' in ceiling and roof spaces in it's thousands.

Who can I have an intelligent discussion with, as all the safety websites I have visited don't seem to have the correct resources or contacts.

Thanks in anticipation

Dave

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    Hi,

    The manufacturer and distributor are under zero obligation to supply a customer with the list of tests they carried out, unless it's part of a contract (and even then, you can't force them; it's a general principle of contract law, that the remedy is damages usually).

    If it's deployed in offices, then it was a B2B transaction, governed by the contract. Consumer legislation is out of the window, all bets are off, because it depends on the contract T+C's.

    If it's purchased by consumers, and it can be shown to have caused damage to consumer property (e.g. fire caused by it damaged the home) then the supplier is liable for damage caused by their product (note - you can't take it to ridiculous extremes, and you can't lump in anything deemed 'economic loss' - your "cost of total replacement" that you refer to, is likely to include a huge element of that, and normally that is not compensated for - unless it's written in a contract!). Consumers best course of action is to discuss with Trading Standards if a product is believed to be dangerous. Consumers of course could raise a claim in a court before or after damage (e.g. if they can show a product is dangerous even before a product causes damage) but if you don't have the damage to show for it, then you'd have to be extremely certain it is worth doing, because although the lawyer is going to certainly be compensated, the plaintiff might not win the case at all. By the way, just because one person (even an expert) or even a group of experts says something is dangerous doesn't mean in itself that a supplier or manufacturer was 'negligent'. It's quite subtle. You'd certainly need a lawyer if you're going that route, and if it were me, I'd say one would be lucky if they walked away with any award in that situation, if you imagine the costs involved to get that far.

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