The products you purchase should be reasonably safe so long as you use them for their intended purpose and heed included safety warnings. Unfortunately, the number of product recalls that occur every year is proof that not every manufacturer performs due diligence to ensure their products are safe before they reach the hands of consumers.
Grounds for a Product Liability Claim
Importantly, not every injury caused by a consumer product necessarily justifies a personal injury lawsuit. In order to have a valid claim against a product manufacturer, a prospective claimant must be able to prove that a specific actionable defect in a product directly caused them harm, that they were using the product normally and for its intended purpose when they got hurt, and that the defect in question existed when the product left its manufacturer’s control. Three kinds of defects may allow a product liability lawsuit to proceed, all of which a Lewisville attorney could explain in further detail. First, a claimant may base their claim on a product’s defective design, meaning that some element of the product’s construction makes it inherently dangerous. Alternatively, a product may suffer from a manufacturing defect, which occurs when an otherwise safely designed product is not assembled correctly or contains a faulty component. Finally, a manufacturer may bear liability for a marketing defect if their safely designed and manufactured product does not have appropriate instructions and/or warnings for safe use, and a consumer gets hurt by doing something with the product that they could not have reasonably known would be harmful.
