Lighting Liability

Many experts believe we are in the beginning stages of a massive shift from traditional light sources to LED.  The U.S. Department of Energy has commissioned several studies analyzing and projecting the LED market.  One analytical tool used to quantify the size of this shift ties expected LED market penetration to the financial payback associated with LED.   

The chart below quantifies this relationship.  What it tells us is that, if LED can deliver a 2 year payback for commercial applications, then it can expect to achieve an approximate market penetration of 30%.  For industrial applications, a 2 year payback should translate into about a 40% LED share.  Given that LED is estimated to be at about a 1.5% market penetration for all outdoor lighting applications (and lower for indoor), it will indeed be a massive shift.

Sources:      (1) Arthur D. Little, 2001
(2) “Energy Savings Potential of Solid State Lighting in General Illumination Applications”, U.S. Department of Energy, 2010

One conclusion we draw from this is that, if an end-user is going to switch from one light source to another, they need to document the suitability of that switch – for code compliance purposes, for insurance purposes, and for liability purposes.  Since the volume of switching is going to dwarf anything we have ever seen, and since the dollar values associated with this switching is going to be enormous, end-users and their suppliers need to be absolutely certain that their documentation is complete, accurate, and defensible in a court of law.

The photometric plan is perhaps the most critical piece of the documentation package, yet as we’ve demonstrated, its preparation is fraught with vulnerabilities that any tort lawyer would be more than happy to exploit.  In fact, they already have.

In BRAY vs. BI-STATE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, Division Two), a woman fell in a parking garage and injured herself.  Alleging insufficient lighting, she sued the garage operator, which had a policy in place of turning off every other light fixture during the day.  A large portion of the testimony revolved around the photometric process:  who input the data, whether the accuracy of the photometric software had been tested, whether light meter readings confirmed the results of the photometrics, etc.

In reviewing the case law, we found a couple thousand cases in which plaintiffs alleged insufficient/inadequate lighting on the part of the defendant.  As we embark on this shift from a 1.5% LED market share to 30% or 40% or probably more, don’t jeopardize the savings of your LED investment by thinking that your “free” factory-prepared photometric plan is bullet-proof when it’s not.