Find Products Liability Attorney By Chris Welsh
How do you know when a personal injury resulting from a consumer product qualifies as one that can be eligible for compensation in damages? While there are no federal laws governing the subject, each state has a set of laws that coincide in many important areas, like that of how to determine the eligibility of a case. The first part of understanding this subject is looking at which stage in the product's life the problem occurred, and next, determining who is responsible for the problem.
Types of Problems
There are a range of problems that can occur with products, including:
- Design problems, where something about the product is inherently too dangerous.
- Manufacturing problems, where the defect occurred during the creation of the product.
- Marketing problems, when something about the way the product was packaged fell short of warning the consumer of potential danger.
Determining Fault
As long as a product was sold, anyone along the chain of design, manufacture, and sale could potentially be liable for a product defect that results in personal injury. Determining where the fault lies can be a difficult, seemingly impossible task in some cases. The laws that need to be navigated to make the discovery can be complex; this is where a product liability attorney earns a fee, determining fault, and then adequately proving it in a court of law. If you are juggling chainsaws and suffer an injury, you won't be likely to get much compensation from the hardware store that sold them. If, however, you are properly using the chainsaw and the chain comes loose and injures you, a product liability attorney should be on your short list of people to call.
Understanding Product Liability Law
In the United States, defective or dangerous products cause thousands of injuries every year. Product liability law, or the legal rules concerning who is responsible for defective or dangerous products, differs from ordinary injury law -- it is this set of rules that sometimes makes it easier for an injured person to recover damages.
Product liability means that a manufacturer or seller is being held liable for giving consumers access to a defective product. Responsibility for a product defect that causes injury lies with all sellers of the product who are along the distribution chain. Potentially liable parties include: the product manufacturer; a manufacturer of component parts; the wholesaler; the retail store that sold the product to the consumer.
Legally, a product must meet the ordinary expectations of the consumer. When it exhibits an unexpected defect or danger, the product cannot be said to meet the ordinary expectations of the consumer.
Typically, product liability claims are based on state rather than federal laws, and brought under theories of negligence, strict liability, or breach of warranty. In addition, a set of commercial statutes in each state, modeled on the Uniform Commercial Code, will contain warranty rules affecting product liability.
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