We often take our everyday lives for granted. That is, until something rips us away from our comfort zone. The food we eat, the cars we drive, the products we use… these are all things that we take for granted until they turn against us. Product defects cause thousands of injuries each year and even deaths when the negligence is severe enough on the side of the manufacturer or seller. It’s important to know that product defects aren’t your fault, and if they are truly caused by the products themselves and result in injury, then you should contact a team of experienced injury attorneys to plead your case and try to get you the compensation you deserve.
For example, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, there were 293 reports of fatalities that occurred between 2000 and 2010 as a result of appliances, furniture, or television instability. A whopping 31% of these were caused by furniture tipping over and resulting in deaths. This is a very niche example of a much wider issue. Products fail every day and change people’s lives forever. Inherently, there is really no telling what product it is that would have the most potential to hurt you. Anything is dangerous if it was made with a high enough degree of irresponsibility.
Everyday products result in injuries quite frequently. It’s not just the obvious ones like brake failure or the exploding cell phones you may hear about in the news. You would be surprised what could cause you bodily harm until it happens. From poorly built ceiling fans to decorative swords with shoddy handles, there are numerous ways to find yourself in trouble when you’re in the business of using products. The scary part is the sheer amount of dangers you may be exposed to if a company doesn’t do its part. That is what boggles the mind. With so much trust being put into these products that we deem to be “safe” just because they make their way onto the shelves of our local superstore, it is a true betrayal of trust when they fail.
When a product is defective, it has the potential to alter your life forever. This is all-the-more sad because of the simple intentions with which people buy most products. An aluminum baseball bat for your kid’s baseball league should not shatter in the cold weather and send shards flying everywhere. A new shirt should not be so flammable that it immediately engulfs in flames when you come within 10 feet of a cigarette. A water bottle should not be leaking hazardous chemicals into your water during your morning run. These things just shouldn’t be happening. After all, you buy these products because you don’t expect the companies that make them to harm you. Yet, unfortunately, they do. That’s when these companies need to be held responsible for their actions by an experienced injury law firm.
Products can be defective in any number of ways that can cause a person bodily harm, but typically they are broken down into three main categories: Design defects, manufacturing defects, and marketing defects.
Design defects are products that the entire product is more or less defective. When something is defective by design, it means the whole thing should have been deemed unfit to be released in whatever capacity it was released in. If a company designs a necklace that gets tighter and tighter every time you step into the sunlight, for whatever reason, this would be an obvious example of a design defect. It simply is not safe or useful in its current form and, as a result, it could cause an injury. This type of defect usually occurs because it was not thoroughly tested or inspected before the product was put on the market.
The next type of defect is a manufacturing defect. This means that the design portion was acceptable, but somewhere along the line, something went wrong while it was being made. Recently Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay billions of dollars over claims that they knew their baby powder product could be harmful and did not warn consumers. This could either happen to the whole of the products that were produced or, more commonly, there was an error and only a select amount was made to be defective. In each of these different types of defects, someone else along the chain of command is usually at fault, if not the whole company at large by association.
Lastly, there is a marketing defect. This may not be what you’d expect as a result of the name, but it actually deals with the warnings and instructions typically found on the back of the product. It’s not always something as simple as a misspelled word or misleading sentence that leads a consumer to be injured. In these cases, it often has to do with what the manufacturer left out. If they fail to warn you about a potentially dangerous side effect of a product, then they can be held liable for the resulting harm that occurs. If a chemical product fails to tell you that it can give you third-degree burns if it comes into contact with skin, that would be an example of a marketing defect.
At the end of the day, unfortunately, these things happen all the time. With an experienced injury attorney by your side, you could end up with significant financial compensation for your physical and mental pain as a result of the defective product. Companies need to work tirelessly to make sure their products are safe, and that includes checking and double-checking every step of the way from the design, to the manufacturing, to the warning labels. If they fail to do so, they are putting more lives at risk than they ever imagined. A customer and patron of their brand shouldn’t have their life altered because the company betrayed their trust. It’s just not fair.
That’s why we stop at nothing to get justice for our clients. Nobody has the right to trick you into buying a potentially dangerous product that could take you away from the things you love the most. Here at Blase Inzina Injury Attorneys, we’ve been diligently handling injury cases for the last 15 years, and we’ve been able to help countless clients get justice for their injuries. Ultimately, we will do everything in our power to let your voice be heard and get you the help you need. You shouldn’t have to suffer for using the products you love and trust. To find out more about what we can do to help, give us a call today at (337) 347-7177 to speak to an attorney.