[FL-Flinter]

Grymster2007 brought up insurance companies and product liability - after being self-employed most all my life, 17 years of which when my customer base was solely industrial & commercial and my primary work was design & fabrication of custom equipment, there isn't a product liability policy that's worth the paper it's written on let alone what they expect you to pay for premiums.

It doesn't matter what happens or why, if you touched it, looked at it or just happened to be in the general vicinity of where it is, you're going to wind-up at least partly responsible depending on how wide of a net the lawyers cast. Insurance companies are in the business of collecting money, not paying it out and they will use any excuse they can find to deny paying a claim just as they'll use any excuse to raise your premiums too.

I held a primary general liability, product liability and a blanket/umbrella policy - I was paying almost $28,000 per year with no employees just to have the paperwork to satisfy corporations I did work for. It doesn't matter if your work is even related to an incident because if I connected a machine in a plant and someone got hurt for any reason not even related to the machine I installed, the lawyers will go fishing for the deepest pockets or multiple pockets to dip into. It's the same way no matter what, you change the oil on a fleet truck, if that truck gets hit by another vehicle in an accident, despite the fact the truck you worked on is not at fault, there will be a lawyer trying to connect the oil change to the brake or steering system, maybe a smudge of dirt on the windshield just so they can lay some amount of blame on you. You install a new air compressor in a manufacturing plant and someone gets their fingers chopped off by a pneumatic powered machine, you will be named in the lawsuit. You connect an appliance to the utility gas line and the plant down the street blows up, you can bet you'll be sitting in court over it because when the lawyers go fishing, they cast very large nets.

If you get up every day worrying about getting sued, you'd better just get over it because you can be sued by anyone at any time for any thing. I've got 22 years in the volunteer fire & rescue, you stop at a car crash to render assistance, think the Good Sam laws protects you? WRONG! If you stop you become liable and can be sued, likely the court will throw it out but you'll still have the legal defense losses to eat. You play it safe and don't stop, you can also be sued for not stopping and rendering assistance. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

I've come to the realization that when you go do what you do, forget about getting sued, pay attention to what you're doing and make it right with yourself - the moral court holds more value than anything else. Do your work so you know it's right and no matter what happens, at least you will maintain a clear conscience. You can all the liability releases and other paperwork you want, aside from some small claims issues, all you're doing is wasting paper because nothing protects you from being liable even if whatever happened has nothing to do with what you did. You checker a stock and the wrist breaks, you're going to be sued. You put a scope on and the idiot pulling the trigger shoots his hunting buddy, you're probably going to be sued. Polish the feed ramp on a pistol and it blows-up from bad ammo, you'll be calling & paying your lawyer. The only real way of protecting yourself is to not own anything. Lease all your equipment, lease your workshop, if your house is paid-off put it in your wife's name only or lock it into a trust of some kind. Incorporate if you can afford it but remember, the cost goes well beyond the paperwork for the corp. itself, there are legal ad laws, notices of fictitious name, you'll pay higher business taxes at the local level, you'll pay corporate state & fed taxes and so forth ... all those payments have to come from somewhere. I used to put a note in large font on all my invoices from my former business: "Please note that approximately 53% of the total labor costs shown on this invoice are imbedded taxes."

I haven't been impressed at all with what I've seen come out of CSOT - based on that I've no desire to give them any of my money. The most recent graduate of CSOT I happened across could not seem to grasp the concept of why you move the front sight in the opposite direction of where you want the POI to go - then again, he had no idea how to run a simple metal cutting bandsaw or a basic manual lathe either - I wouldn't let him shoot any of my guns let alone work on them!