In the news, you may have heard of people being injured by certain products or items that either malfunctioned or they became sick because of some type of food contamination. If this has happened to you, you could be entitled to a lawsuit settlement against the company who made the product. This is what is known as product liability.
What is product liability and what you need to know about it if you are injured by a product.
Product Liability
If you have been injured by a product, for example, a tire blowout, an airbag, or even a household tool such as a vacuum cleaner, if the product was faulty when you used it, and you can prove there was a problem with it, such as a recall after you were injured, you could be entitled to a settlement from the company.
Product liability law is a branch of the personal injury law and it is dedicated to getting those injured by products compensation. There are three areas of product liability, so your case would fall into one of them.
Manufacturing Defect Issues
The first area of product liability law is manufacturing defect problems. These are issues that occur with your product at the manufacturing level, so right when they were made. If a flaw or defect was not detected in a product during the creating process, the company could be liable to a lawsuit for not checking their products properly before sending them out to the public.
This can include meat or other foods that are contaminated in the plant by Salmonella or E. Coli, flashlights that overheat or explode, tire blowouts or tools that malfunction during use injuring the worker.
Design Defect Problems
The second area of product liability is in the design process. If a design is not done correctly or the company doesn't find where in the product the design has gone wrong until someone in the public gets injured by it, they can be liable to a lawsuit.
Design flaws can include a vehicle, such as a truck or SUV, that can rollover on low-speed turns or lose control due to steering problems. Toys that have sharp edges that can hurt a child, or has small, removable parts in which a small child can swallow a piece and get hurt. Medical items such as pacemaker or knee replacement devices that release toxins into the body. Or chairs, ladders or other furniture that collapses under a low- weight.
Fails To Warn You
The final area of product liability is under a failure to warn the user.
This issue is when you are not warned of any potential danger in using the product. For example, your airbag deploys during an accident, but you are unaware of the injuries it can cause. It could also be containers or cooking equipment that might contain harmful chemicals that could be released when used causing sickness.
Contact a firm, like Greenman, Goldberg, Raby and Martinez Law Firm, for more help.
Share28 March 2019
After I was in a car accident, I wasn't sure what I was going to do in the future. I had some really significant back and neck pain, so I started talking with a lawyer about how to recover some of my losses. I began working with an attorney to take care of things, but I was nervous about how the process would unfold. I began working with the attorney to evaluate every component of the incident, and help me to decode the problems I was faced with. We worked on learning more about the lawsuit, and it helped me to make sense of the situation. Learn more about accidents on this blog.