Matt,
That is total corporate B.S.
I am sure your bosses will be proud.
We will never know the details of the lawsuit because it is locked up in a non-disclosure agreement, but some facts are public knowledge.
That Hobie has never advertised the comptip as a safety feature. On the contrary they advertise it as a "performance" feature.
That Hobie was owned by Coleman Inc., a public company, at the time of the introduction of the comptip.
That all public companies are required by federal law to uphold their fiduciary responsibilities to their stockholders.
Which means that ALL of their design, production, marketing, etc, etc, actions must be for improving the value or profitability of the company.
History has shown that anytime the officers of a publically held company do anything or even say anything which hurts the bottom line, they can be sued and will usually loose.
Any retrofit of a "safety feature" has always been brought about because the bean-counters figured that it was cheaper for the company to fix problems than to fight, not necessarily loose, lawsuits.
Giving away comptips hurt the bottom line.


A perfect example is the exploding Ford Pintos.
Documents stolen from Ford Corp. showed that they had figured out that it would cost many millions of dollars to reteofit a less than ten dollar safety feature on the existng Pinto but it would cost half as much to pay off the burn victims and their families.
The documents were disallowed at trial, so Ford won and didn't have to fix the old Pintos.
THAT IS THE COPORATE WORLD.