§ 147.082.Notice

The notice provision supporting the cure defence, with four content requirements and a timing rule.

The notice must: identify the product; explain how a cure may be obtained; state the charges — for a recent consumer product, that there is no additional charge for the cure and what will be charged for delivery and installation; otherwise, the amount charged — and inform the recipient that the solution is offered to avoid harm and that offering it could affect the recipient’s right to recover damages.

That fourth item is a candid disclosure requirement. The recipient is told, in the notice itself, that the offer they are receiving may cost them a claim.

Subsection (b) sets the timing as the longer of two periods: the 90th day before the claimant suffers harm; or the time needed to order, deliver, and install the correction before harm occurs.

The second branch is the meaningful one, and it is claimant-protective: notice arriving too late to act on is no notice at all, whatever the calendar says.

Subsection (c) allows the defendant to prove either delivery or actual receipt within the period.

Subsection (d) is the provision that has aged worst. There is a rebuttable presumption that notice has been delivered if the Year 2000 Project Office website or toll-free number provided access to the required information — rebuttable by credible evidence that the claimant did not receive it.

Posting to a government website was treated as constructive notice to the world, which was a workable answer to a mass-notification problem and depends entirely on a site that no longer exists.