Comments on: “Caught short, 3M will pay $700,000” https://www.overlawyered.com/2008/03/caught-short-3m-will-pay-700000/ Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:24:06 +0000 hourly 1 By: markm https://www.overlawyered.com/2008/03/caught-short-3m-will-pay-700000/comment-page-1/#comment-11414 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:24:06 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/wpblog/?p=6038#comment-11414 Someone buying wider tapes (half-inch and up for most types) is looking for area coverage or added holding power from spreading the load across more of the package. In these applications, 6% short on the area is likely to be significant, but not nearly as significant as a shortage in a “gallon” of milk, since in real use everyone overlaps the tape without measuring precisely. There are three things I don’t know:

1. Are tape reels are subject to shrinkage in width? It sounds like if that’s the case, 3M was consistently under-compensating for it. I think that may have been an issue with older tape types based on paper, cloth, and cellophane, but I doubt the plastic film used as the base material in modern packaging tape shrinks at all other than slight and predictable changes with temperature.

2. Is there an industry standard that tapes are generally a little undersized? Others have cited “2×4’s”, which are far more undersized, in an industry standard well known to every carpenter, building contractor, architect, and civil engineer.

3. Was the package labeled with the actual width, in smaller print than the “for one inch use” marking? I can see an argument that such packaging is sufficiently honest, especially in conjunction with #2.

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