Safety

If your hazard analysis has identified safety hazards that bother you, and you cannot design out or guard against the hazards that you have identified, then you are in a difficult position.
If you are trying to do a selling job to people who are not very technically sophisticated, you might want to consider making a model of the system and demonstrating the hazards that have you concerned. In the same vein, you may want to demonstrate how you are safeguarding people in the vicinity of the equipment you are replacing.
You have a difficult selling job in front of you, and I do not envy your position. If the concern these people have is to get around the OSHA regulations, you may want to get someone from the consulting arm of OSHA to attend a meeting at your site to explain the OSHA regulations addressing this area, and explain that they will be trading one set of OSHA regulations for another set of OSHA regulations. Remember, the people in the consulting arm of OSHA are not allowed to interact with the people in the enforcing arm of OSHA.

I can only talk about my knowledge and experience in the U.S.A. Also, I am talking from the viewpoint of an engineer, and from experience as an expert witness in product-liability lawsuits. For a more detailed and definitive answer to your "can I be sued" question, you should talk to a lawyer.
Here in the U.S., a designer working for a manufacturing company does not have to worry about being sued for a defective product, because they are working for an employer who controls their activities and there are many people involved in the design of the product.
Also, most employees do not have enough assets to make it worthwhile for an attorney to come after them.
I would highly recommend that all of your company's products undergo the scrutiny of a hazard-analysis study. Part of any well-planned hazard analysis looks at normal use, foreseeable misuse, who the users are, and the environment in which the product will foreseeably be used. Keep reading MACHINE DESIGN, because my column will be discussing hazard-analysis studies.

To start with, juries are not predictable. Now to expand on your question, and based upon my experience all over the country, juries view the lack of a hazard analysis as demonstrating a lack of concern for safety. When a hazard analysis takes place, it is critical that complete documentation is part of the product file.
A hazard analysis does include the brainstorming that you describe. But the second step is to analyze the hazards identified. It is important to look at the past experience of similar products, both yours and your competitors. Approach the ANSI committee members who are on the ANSI committee that writes standards for products similar to yours. And if you still have questions, find an attorney who can question the National Trial Lawyers Association (an organization of plaintiff attorneys) and another attorney who can question the national organization for defense attorneys.
Normally you shouldn't have to go to such great lengths. But if you question a hazard you have identified in your hazard analysis, this is a good way to proceed. Then, after identifying the hazards you believe are "reasonably foreseeable," try to address them with redesign or guarding. It is my opinion that addressing serious hazards with warnings and instructions is leaving your company wide open for the problem you have identified.
It has been my experience that juries are very receptive to a company that has performed a good hazard analysis and that has thoroughly documented it. They view the company as a responsible and caring organization.
A good example is in the auto industry. It is true that when automakers lose they can lose big. But they don't lose many lawsuits considering the vast number thrown at them. Automakers and many other large companies such as 3M have a reputation for thorough and complete documentation supporting their decisions. Plaintiff attorneys, for the most part, are afraid to go after them. When they do, they know they are in for a very difficult and very expensive ordeal, where the plaintiff attorney will have to spend a great deal of money trying to disprove the defendant's hazard analysis.