Everything You Need to Know About Filing a Product Liability Claim
These days it’s hard to escape news stories about products — especially electronics — that fail catastrophically, causing damage to property and harm to users. Whether it’s a cell phone or e-cig that’s overheating and bursting into flame in someone’s pocket, a motorized transportation vehicle that’s catching on fire or knocking someone on their head, or a washing machine exploding in the middle of a cycle, product defects are everywhere.
When you’re hurt while correctly using a product that fails without warning, you can suffer serious injuries and you deserve compensation. Explore how a product liability case proceeds, how a personal injury lawyer comes into the picture and how you can get compensation for your injuries.
Product Liability Claims
Product liability claims result when someone is using a product properly and in the manner in which it was intended, and something goes wrong which causes the product to fail, resulting in injury. In order to prove the claim, the plaintiff has to prove that there was a defect to the product, that the defect caused the product to fail, and that failure was the direct or proximate cause of the injury that resulted.
Types of Defective Product
There are three general types of defective product case that can be pursued. These include defective design, defective manufacture, and inadequate instructions or warnings.
With a defective manufacture case, a few products in an otherwise well-made line fail and cause injuries due to a problem on the manufacturing line that wasn’t caught in quality control. For example, you’re riding a well-known brand of mountain bike, but due to a fault in the bolt that secures the front wheel to your specific bicycle, the wheel comes off and you suffer an accident. Other bikes in the line don’t have this problem—only yours. This is a manufacturing defect.
With a design defect, an entire line of products is found to be dangerous. If for example, a line of electronics is discovered to have defective lithium-ion batteries which cause them to overcharge or overheat, with the potential for explosions or bursting into flame, this is a design defect.
Finally, all products that have some sort of potential danger are required to carry instructions and warnings to avoid this danger. If you’re using an appliance that has to be cleaned after every use, or it risks catastrophic failure, and there aren’t instructions as to proper cleaning techniques, this could constitute a failure to warn.
Calling a Product Liability Attorney
If you’ve been injured using a product due to some sort of design, manufacturing or failure to warn defect, you may be entitled to compensation for your medical bills, pain, and suffering, lost wages, damage to your quality of life and more. The best way to get these awards, however, is with the help of a qualified Amarillo-Lubbock product liability attorney.
If you find yourself in this situation, don’t try to go it alone. Contact the product liability lawyers at Tormey & McConnell for a free discussion of the details about your case, and let us help you get justice today.