UL passed me on to a company called LUX-TSI. I must say both steve and Gareth at LUX- TSI have been very helpful to and explain how I can go about self certification with the C E mark. I was very impressed as they did not press there own services and explained all the different categories and what i needed to do in that area to self certify and also gave me advise on how to go about things.
Most of it is to show you have taken due diligence to avoid, electrocution, fire, pollution, hazardous materials, EMI, and keep a file on all that you have done to cover that.
Having an already approved power supply helps.
If some can let me know if it is ok to post a web site address, if it is I will post their company web site.

 

From my limited CE knowledge..Be careful.. Its one thing to self-certify knowing you have laboratory test data to back up your certification and another to just check the boxes without the "proper/certified" testing to back it up. There are pretty hefty fines for "self-certifying" and then getting caught not truly meeting the requirements.

Hopefully it will never be an issue but if someone does get hurt they will challenge the heck out of your self-certification CE mark and you'd better have data to back it up.

 

Ninety percent of small cheap devices sold to the public these days are very cheaply made China products. They don't care about CE or UL and will just print the labels on their product to suit the countries they sell to.

And that's not just ebay sellers, the same cheap China items are rebadged and sold through the "proper" stores too.

So 90% or more of the stuff people are buying possibly doesn't comply or doesn't match the regulation.

The customer dictates what they want to buy; either a $100 locally made item with proper compliance, or a ebay/store item for $20 that does pretty much all the same things and has no compliance or a faked compliance. Nobody cares anymore.

 

You should also remember that anybody can file suit for any reason. If you have to defend yourself against a frivolous suit it is going to cost several tens of thousands of dollars.

 

is it possible to get insurance to cover court costs?

 

Lloyds of London was reputed to be able to insure "anything". The premiums however were tailored to the actual perceived risk to the names.

 

business liability loans (umbrella policy,etc...) are a great idea and can save your butt when you start a small business or really any business if you expect to/could get sued.. but its not cheap and can be hard to get a company to actually insure you for a small start up.
Its best to do everything else though to protect yourself as much as possible before shelling out routine "bad luck money" though.. get everything in writing/including legal type warnings with your products/clear expectations of what your product does or is,etc... Chances are you never have any problems.. But %#it happens

 

And without an real agency certification, insurance probably wouldn't write coverage.