Personal Injury Attorney Helps Fight Against Faulty Products

Product liability is a hot topic in the legal world and a subject, which a personal injury attorney will deal with on a regular basis. Deciding where the line between producer and user responsibility can be nebulous. Most products now contain tomes of warnings to protect themselves from lawsuits and authoritative statements that say, "use at your own risk." Ultimately, states govern the majority of product liability laws. There are three main types that most cases fall under. These are manufacturing defect, failure to provide adequate warnings, and design defect.

Manufacturing defects occur in individual products or a group of them rather than within an entire line (although in rare cases this could be the case as well). Take a car, for example, a portion of cars may have received defective brakes, which went through inspection unnoticed. Once this issue is discovered (generally well after one or several incidents have occurred a result) the car will be recalled or production temporarily ceased. Anyone who suffered due to this defect would be entitled to compensation. Most companies will choose to settle outside of court rather than risk increased negative press. In the rare instance that the company disagrees, a personal injury attorney will take the case to court.

The second type of liability law concerns a lack of warning to the user. If you look at the packaging or instructions to most products, you are likely to find one if not several caveats of use. Choking hazard, high temperatures, do not use near water, do not take on an empty stomach—the lists can be endless especially with pharmaceutical products. With any product, there will always be potential risks associated with use that is not connecting with a defect or poor design, but rather just its inherent nature. As long as there is adequate warning that is clearly stated the user is responsible for any damages incurred. If the warnings are lacking, however, there may be cause for legal action.

The final product liability law protects consumers against design defects. Unlike manufacturing defects, these will be present within the entire inventory of the product as they are not irregularities, but intended (any problems that arise are not intended, however). Going back to cars, one famous example was a notoriously designed model back in the 70's. When struck from behind in a rear-end collision (what would be considered a "normal" impact) the gas tank would be ripped and all it would take was a small ignition to light the entire thing on fire. While this is a risk in any car accident, in this instance it was specifically related to how the car was engineered, which was evidenced in its regularity.

So who is responsible? If you think you've been the victim of a faulty product, you should immediately collect any evidence associated with the incident. Take pictures of injuries, keep hospital records, and keep the product, packaging, receipts, and anything else related to it. Contact a personal injury attorney for advice on how to move forward with receiving compensation, if possible. Be careful of contacting a company directly without the aid of a personal injury attorney.