Consumers in the United States purchase and use billions of products every year. Unfortunately, those products are frequently the cause of harm to the consumer as well. When a manufacturer, distributor, supplier or retailer makes a defective product available to a consumer who subsequently suffers harm, the consumer may have a legal remedy known as a “product liability claim”. According to the Bureau of Justice statistics, in 2003 (the most recent year for which statistics were available), the United States District Courts concluded 27, 402 product liability cases. Keep in mind that some of those cases are multiple Plaintiff cases – meaning more than one person suffered injuries in the same case. Clearly the number of consumers harmed by defective products is substantial.
So what is a product liability claim? A product liability case is a type of tort case. Tort law is the body of law that provides remedies and compensation for people that have suffered damages due to another person(s) liability (fault). While product liability laws can be very different from one state to the next, they generally arise from one of three types of claims: manufacturing defects; design defects; and failure to warn cases. An example of a manufacturing defect would be a child’s care seat that was intended to stay attached to the carrier handle, but which fails to remain attached due to a problem in the manufacturing process. In other words, had the car seat been made according to the intended design, it would have remained attached and not created a hazard. A design defect, on the other hand, would be if that same car seat was made according to the intended design instruction, but the design did not take into account the weight of a child and therefore could not hold the child even if manufactured according to the design instructions. If we take the same example, a failure to warn case might arise if the manufacture knew that the car seat could only hold a child up to 40 lbs., but did not provide the proper warning to the consumer stating the weight limits of the product.
Most product liability cases require the injured party to prove negligence. Negligence is also a complex concept, but it essentially means that someone had a duty of care to you, that they breached that duty causing your injuries and that you suffered damages as a result of their act or omission. However, one type of product liability claim that does not involve proving negligence is a breach of warranty claim. Another type that does not require proof of negligence is a strict liability claim. Under strict liability claims, the focus is on the product itself and its inherent danger. In other words, if you are in the business of producing explosive materials and you produce defective explosives that cause harm to someone, you may be liable even if you weren’t negligent in the production just because the product is so inherently dangerous.
As you can see, product liability law is a very complex and complicated area of the law and encompasses a wide variety of claims. If you think you may have been injured by a product, contact the law offices of Ledger & Associates at 1-800-300-0001 or visit us at www.ledgerlaw.com
