Defective Products Ruin Lives - Get a Personal Injury Lawyer

Consumers trust that manufacturers have installed and regularly test their safety measures to ensure consistent quality products. However, sometimes this trust is shattered when a person is injured as a result of a defective product. The injured party or their family will hire a personal injury lawyer to prosecute the manufacturer to the fullest extent the law and recover damages through a product liability suit. When dangerous products do make it to consumers hands, product liability law ensures that manufacturer of the questionable good will be held accountable, and the victim will be compensated accordingly.

When beginning a product liability case, it is important for the victim to prove that he was using the product responsibly and for its intended use when the accident occurred. When exploring the defective product and its role in the accident, it is important to ascertain if the defect was inherited from the creator's design or merely a malfunction that occurred during production. Both strategies are difficult for a personal injury lawyer to prove in court. In order to prove a design defect, the technical choices involved in the creation of the product must be critiqued, which usually requires quite a bit of expert testimony, time, and money. Proving causation of an accident that happened at no fault of the manufacturer, but through an inherent flaw in the products design is extremely difficult. It is also difficult to prove that a credibly designed product was manufactured improperly and defective when it left the production line before it caused an accident.

Four of the main arguments heard in product liability cases are negligence, breach of warranty, misrepresentation, and strict liability. To prove a manufacturer was negligent is to say there was a lack of sufficient care in the production, sale, or design of warning labels of the dangerous product. If a product could be toxic if ingested, and this detail was not mentioned on the labeling and an incident occurred, the company would be found negligent and liable. A breach of warranty has occurred when a product fails to perform as indicated. If a bulletproof vest were found to be penetrable, then the warranty of the product would be breached. When consumers get the wrong idea about a product because of unrealistic marketing, a misrepresentation has occurred. Strict liability holds the defendant responsible for the product's defect even if it is not the defendant's fault that the product became dangerous. The most common types of products found at the center of product liability suits include chemicals, firearms, pharmaceutical products, motor vehicles, tools, machinery, tobacco, and asbestos.

In today's economy, companies are quick to recall defective products out of fear of personal injury lawyers and product liability suits. One such company is Johnson & Johnson, who have issued massive recalls of their product Tylenol in the past. Through taking a hit and recalling the product, the company tried to salvage their image and repair their consumers' trust. Companies must be held responsible for their defective products through cooperating with the FDA and compensating victims of their malfunctions.