Standards in jurisdiction

When applying (safety) technical standards, the question often arises as to what significance these documents have in court, e.g. when dealing with accidents involving machines or other products.

The Commission for Occupational Health and Safety and Standardisation (KAN) has prepared a legal opinion on this topic. In it, the author addresses several issues in connection with technical standards.
 

Preliminary remarks

• It should be mentioned in advance that the study only examines judgements. This means that unfortunately only limited statements can be made about the general assessment of the application of standards in lower court proceedings.
• In other words, the report makes no statement about the extent to which authorities (e.g. market supervisory authorities) or insurers, etc. use standards in their investigations, but only about how courts treat this aspect.
• It should also be mentioned that standards are undoubtedly an enormous source of knowledge for safety engineering and make a significant contribution to safe products. It is undoubtedly advisable for anyone designing machines or other products to consult and apply the relevant standards. Nevertheless, the study shows that standards are not laws and are therefore not treated as such by adjudicating institutions, i.e. courts.
• This study is therefore nevertheless very helpful in that it provides helpful context for statements such as the following: "That's not so important, it's only in the informative appendix to the standard.".
   

Core statements of the study and interpretation for manufacturers

In essence, the report provides three core statements:

• The courts make no distinction between normative and informative content (e.g. informative annexes).
  In practice, you sometimes hear sentences like "That's only in the informative part anyway, it's not that important". With regard to the results of the study, it becomes very clear that such statements should be viewed with extreme caution, as courts - according to the study - do not differentiate here.
• Courts cite the norm to support the statement of a law
  Courts judge on the basis of laws, not on the basis of norms. Therefore - according to the study - standards are usually only used as additional justification for a result that has already been found elsewhere. For manufacturers of technical products, this means that the most important question to be clarified is always whether the requirements of the underlying law (e.g. EU Machinery Regulation, Machinery Directive, Low Voltage Directive, etc.) are met. In other words: Beware of blind faith in standards. The benefit in the application of the standard therefore results more from the proposal for a usually technically very good solution to fulfil the respective requirements than from the absolute legal certainty that supposedly results from a standard.

• Who works on standards usually plays no role for courts
  How standards committees are composed and what influence this has on the (legal) validity of standards is generally not addressed in judgements. Sometimes the expertise of the persons involved is emphasised, but occasionally - if it fits in with the reasoning of the courts (see point 2) - statements on standards are downplayed with reference to assessments reserved for the legislator.

   

  Download the study and further information

  The study was published by the Commission for Occupational Health and Safety and Standardisation in December 2016. You can open and download the entire study via the following link:

   

  

       KAN study: Case law on technical standards and documents similar to standards

  We would like to thank KAN for their kind permission to make the study available to our readers free of charge! Further information on the study and additional literature on the topic can be found on the KAN homepage.