Every year, countless people face the devastating reality that the products they trusted were unsafe. Product liability law exists specifically for people in your situation—when manufacturers, designers, or sellers release dangerous products into the marketplace and those products cause real harm to real people.
You’re dealing with injuries or a wrongful death that never should have happened. You might pursue a claim citing a defective design, manufacturing defect, or marketing defect that led to you being harmed. Let a product liability lawyer lead your fight, as defective product claims involve complicated technical concepts (and legal jargon) and high burdens of proof—and still, they are worth pursuing.
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It is no secret that a substantial percentage of products are defective. There is even a federal Consumer Product Safety Commission created to patrol the problem—yet, the issue continues to cause serious injuries, illnesses, and deaths.
When products’ defects cause harm, the defect typically falls into one of three categories. Your product liability attorney will categorize the defect that led to you or your loved one being harmed, as this will allow your attorney to determine who is liable for your damages.
Some products are dangerous from the moment they’re conceived. Design defects affect every single item in a product line because the fundamental blueprint itself is flawed.
Some common examples of design defects that have injured people include:
Design defects aren’t accidents—they’re predictable consequences of choosing profits over people’s safety. The manufacturer should have tested the product and been aware that it was dangerous, never releasing it to the public.
Manufacturing defects occur when something goes wrong during the production process, causing individual products to deviate from their intended safe design. Examples of such defects (and causes of defects) include:
Building a manufacturing defect case often requires a detailed investigation of the production process, including examining the manufacturing facility, reviewing quality control records, and analyzing other products from the same production batch. Your product liability attorney will not hesitate to conduct such a thorough investigation.
Marketing defects, often known as “failure to warn” cases, involve products that may be perfectly designed and manufactured but lack adequate instructions, warnings, or safety information.
Examples of marketing defects are:
Manufacturers have a legal duty to warn consumers about non-obvious dangers associated with their products and to provide adequate instructions for safe use. When they fail to meet this responsibility, they can be held liable for the resulting injuries, even if the physical product was well-designed and properly manufactured.
When manufacturers make decisions about product safety, they’re not just dealing with abstract statistics or potential liability—they’re making choices that directly impact real people. Even the federal government suggests filing a lawsuit when businesses act unreasonably (including by injuring consumers).
Behind every defective product case is a person whose life has been fundamentally altered, and that person might be:
These aren’t far-fetched examples meant to tug on your heartstrings. These are the realities that result from product manufacturers’ lack of due diligence, corner-cutting, and let’s face it, greed.
This personal dimension also explains why manufacturers and their insurance companies often fight these claims aggressively. They understand that acknowledging responsibility for your injuries might open the door to claims from other victims of the same defective product, potentially costing them millions of dollars in compensation and forcing expensive product recalls or design changes.
One of the strengths of product liability law is that it recognizes the shared responsibility of everyone who contributed to bringing a defective product to market.
The manufacturer who designed or produced the defective product may bear primary responsibility for your injuries.
Distributors and wholesalers who move products from manufacturers to retail stores can also share responsibility for ensuring product safety. While they may not directly control product design or manufacturing, these companies profit from selling products to consumers and have a duty to ensure those products are reasonably safe.
The retailer who sold you the defective product can also be held liable, regardless of whether they knew about the defect. Retailer liability is particularly important when manufacturers lack sufficient assets to cover your damages or when foreign manufacturers are difficult to sue in American courts.
The frightening fact is that, when manufacturers and other negligent parties consciously decide to release a dangerous product to the public, they know that their negligence can cause:
Victims can be awarded punitive damages if the negligent party’s behavior is uncommonly egregious (which may include callousness towards potential victims).
Defective products can also do the worst. That is, they can claim the life of victims, with responsibility for the death falling on any manufacturer or other liable party that exposed that victim to fatal harm. Some of the damages that survivors might face when a loved one passes away are:
Nobody understands the life-altering toll of injuries, illnesses, and wrongful deaths quite like attorneys. They take on victims’ plights as their own, and you should expect authentic empathy and support from your lawyer and their team.
Product manufacturers, others responsible for defective products, and their insurance providers employ several standard defense strategies to avoid responsibility:
These defense strategies are designed to shift blame away from the defective product and onto you or other factors outside the manufacturer’s control. Your attorney will have specific rebuttals for any of these tactics that liable parties attempt to use.
Product liability cases involve complex legal, technical, and medical issues. An experienced, proven attorney is the person who can tie all these elements together into a case seeking compensation for you.
Your attorney, their paralegals, and their other support staff will be solely responsible for getting you the compensation you deserve, and their process will likely be:
If multiple other victims have been harmed by the defective product in question, your best option may be to join a mass tort claim. Your attorney will explain such considerations to you in layman’s terms, as they will know that this is unfamiliar territory for you.
It’s not as if victims of defective products spend their time thinking, “What will I do if this product causes me harm?” Only when unexpected harm strikes do questions arise, and those questions often include:
Product recalls can strengthen your case by providing objective evidence that the product was defective (and the manufacturer should have known about it).
However, a recall does not automatically guarantee that you’ll win your case. You should still hire an attorney to put together a convincing claim or lawsuit, which will not be overly reliant on the fact that the product was recalled.
While preserving the actual product can benefit your claim, you may still have a viable claim even without it. Your lawyer can obtain identical or similar products for testing and comparison, rely on witness testimony about the product’s condition and the circumstances of your injury, furnish receipts to prove you had the product, and use photographs or other documentation to support your case.
You don’t need to be the original purchaser of a defective product to have a valid compensation claim. Product liability law is specifically designed to protect all foreseeable users of products, including family members who use household products, employees injured by workplace equipment, bystanders harmed by defective products, and anyone else who might reasonably be expected to encounter the product during its regular use.
You didn’t cause this situation and shouldn’t have to navigate it alone. Let a lawyer pursue fair compensation for you. Due to the filing deadlines that cases like yours are subject to, you should not wait to hire your attorney.
Most product liability lawyers work on contingency fee arrangements, so you won’t have to pay them out of pocket. That means you can start looking for your attorney without hesitation, so don’t wait.
At Colton Holm Law Firm, we look forward to learning how we can help you resolve your legal concern.Call us today: (406) 259-9986