In light of recent lawsuits brought against major corporations by customers who accidentally misused their products, many manufacturers have announced plans to protect themselves with new warning labels and safety signs.

“We had always taken the intelligence of our customers for granted,” reports Steve Truman, chief publicity manager for Duraco Tools. “We really never thought it was necessary to tell people to be careful with a crowbar. I mean, it’s a crowbar, for God’s sake.” Nevertheless, in the wake of recent successful lawsuits against Duraco competitor MaxTool, all Duraco-brand crowbars will carry a sticker that reads, “WARNING: For external use only”.

The tool manufacture industry is not alone in being affected by recent lawsuit. As part of an arbitrated settlement agreement, HappyBurger, a popular midwestern franchise, must now include on every hamburger wrapper a sticker that reads, “HappyBurger buns do not provide enough air resistance to act as a parachute. Holding a HappyBurger bun over your head and then jumping off a building can result in serious injury or even death.” Trevor Atkins, a marketing executive at HappyBurger, blames a poorly conceived children’s commercial. “You’d think that ordinary people would understand that just because a magical burger bun carries the kids off to HappyBurger in the commercial, that doesn’t mean that an ordinary burger bun is going to help in any way when you jump off the roof of your sixth-grade classroom. Still, better safe than sorry.”

PetroCo, a major gasoline corporation with pumps on street corners nationwide, has installed a series of explanatory stickers on all its gas pumps, an effort with an estimated cost of US$2.6 million. The stickers show someone accidentally mixing gasoline with styrofoam pellets, iodine, and several common household materials in order to create an extremely explosive substance, with a helpful “NO” written in large red letters over each captioned picture. Bob Hyatt, a safety consultant who helped PetroCo institute the changes, explains that the changes “will definitely help PetroCo avoid a lawsuit. There’s absolutely no chance now that anyone could sue PetroCo after unintentionally mixing together a number of household products, since the placards very clearly explain which chemicals should not be combined with PetroCo-brand, and in what ratios to not combine those chemicals.”

Finally, while the high-technology industry has been for the most part immune to accidental-misuse lawsuits, mobile phone/PDA manufacturer TechMate.Com has announced that, after recent complaints by the National Mobile Technology Safety Council, each one of its TechMate Pro FCX-5000 combination phone/personal-digital-assistant/pager/digital-camera will now be shrink-wrapped eight times with tear-resistant material with a repeating message that reads, “Under no circumstances should this product be repeatedly slammed into the user’s groin area.”