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“Products liability” is a wide-ranging area of law dealing with injury claims against companies that manufacture and sell dangerous products. Many of the most dangerous products people file lawsuits over are everyday household appliances, power tools, children’s toys, medical devices, and medication.
If you or a loved one was injured by a dangerous or defective product, call The Queenan Law Firm’s Fort Worth product liability lawyers. Our attorneys can review your case, look at the defects, and help build a case against the negligent manufacturer. Our lawyers fight to help victims and their families get compensation, especially when someone is killed or permanently injured by a defective product. For a free legal consultation on your case, call us today at (817) 476-1797.
Types of Products Liability Cases in Fort Worth, TX
Our attorneys handle many different types of product liability cases. From household appliances to pharmaceuticals and from auto parts to children’s toys, any product you purchase could have design defects or manufacturing defects that make it dangerous to the user. You could also file a claim if the product was inherently dangerous and failed to include proper warnings to keep you and your loved ones safe.
Design Defect Cases
Many products require safety features to help make them reasonable for consumers. For instance, safeguards on blenders and food processors often prevent users from being able to put their hand inside while it is turned on. Similar designs help lawnmowers, power tools, and other appliances and tools keep users safe. However, some design choices actually make products more dangerous than necessary.
In many cases, the materials chosen by the product designer, the shape of the product, or the lack of obvious safety features make a product inherently dangerous to use. If the product designer failed to include reasonable safety features that would have prevented injuries, they could be held responsible for these kinds of design defects.
Often, design defects like this affect the entire line of products or all products of similar design that a company produces. This often allows many victims to come forward and claim that the product was unsafe, each of them seeking damages for their own injuries after using the product as intended.
Manufacturing Defect Cases
If the product’s design was fine but the manufacturer made mistakes during the assembly process, a product could become dangerous. Manufacturing defects often involve issues such as the following:
- Substitution of a weaker or more dangerous material
- Failure to fully assemble a product
- Missing or damaged parts
- Spoilage caused by refrigeration or storage errors or malfunctions
- Mistakes in formulation
- Contaminated products tainted during manufacturing, storage, or transportation
Frequently, manufacturing errors may affect just the one product that happened to have injured you, and other products from the same manufacturer could be perfectly safe. In these cases, it is often vital to save the defective product so that you can use it as evidence of the manufacturing mistake.
Failure to Warn
Some products are dangerous and have inherent risks of cuts, electrocution, burns, and other injuries that they simply cannot add safety features to prevent. Instead, companies put warning labels on products so that the average user will know how to avoid injury. For instance, hairdryers often have warnings not to immerse them in water to prevent electrocution. If a product is dangerous but does not come with adequate warnings, users could get hurt, potentially entitling them to sue the manufacturer.
A warning usually must be adequate to prevent injury during normal use. This means that a company might not be responsible if they failed to provide a warning against an obvious misuse, except in some cases where the misuse was likely. Still, product manufacturers could be liable for warnings that are too small to read, warnings that are not listed on the product itself, or warnings that use inaccurate words or pictures to adequately explain the danger.
Suing Manufacturers for Dangerous and Defective Products in Fort Worth
If a defective or dangerous product injured you, you could be entitled to sue the manufacturer or seller of the product. Your Fort Worth product liability lawyer can help explain to you which parties you can sue and the chances that your case will succeed against any of them.
In many cases, the company whose name is on the product might outsource manufacturing to multiple companies, or they could outsource manufacturing of component parts. This can often mean additional difficulties in determining what company to sue and what stage of manufacturing or design was responsible for the defects. For instance, auto manufacturers often use airbags and tires produced by other companies, so you might need to sue the airbag manufacturer or tire manufacturer for problems with these items instead of suing the car company.
When presenting your case to the judge and jury, it is often important to have the actual defective product. In many cases, your lawyer will need to produce the product and experts witnesses who have analyzed the defect to help prove what went wrong and why the mistake violates industry standards or how the dangers were unreasonable. Save any parts, manuals, packaging, or labels related to your product to help provide as much evidence as you can in your case. Also gather any medical records or photos describing your injuries or adverse effects.
Call Our Fort Worth Product Liability Lawyers for a Free Legal Consultation
If you were injured by a defective or dangerous product, contact the Fort Worth product liability lawyers at The Queenan Law Firm. Our Fort Worth product liability injury lawyers offer free case consultations so you can learn more about how to proceed with your injury case. Call or personal injury lawyer in Fort Worth today at (817) 476-1797 to set up a free legal consultation.