When you buy a product online or from a store, you expect it to be safe. You don’t expect it to cause you injuries. Even if it is an inherently dangerous product, such as a table saw, a curling iron, or a knife, you expect it to come with adequate instructions and warnings.
But sometimes, manufacturers fail in their duties to the public; they either produce a dangerous product that puts the consumer in harm’s way, or they fail to adequately warn the consumer about the product’s potential hazards.
Every day, consumers are injured by dangerous and defective products. Often, such products are voluntarily recalled by the manufacturer, but sometimes safety recalls aren’t issued until after the fact and consumers have sustained injuries and filed complaints.
Generally, defective product claims fall into three categories: 1) manufacturer defects, 2) defective design, or 3) inadequate warnings or instructions.
Manufacturer & Design Defects
Sometimes, a product is defective based on a poor design, or because of an error in the manufacturing process. Some examples of manufacturing defects include tires with a tread that is peeling off, swing sets with cracked chains, bicycles with missing parts, a batch of spinach contaminated with E.coli, and so on. A design defect may involve an automobile that has a serious rollover risk, a space heater that has a tendency to catch fire, a crockpot that overheats and causes a fire hazard, a child’s toy that poses a choking hazard, etc.
Failure to Provide Proper Warning or Instructions
The last time of defective product claim involves the failure to provide consumers with adequate instructions or warnings. For example, if there is an issue of an inadequate warning, the user is usually in danger of injury without knowing it. In other words, the product is dangerous in a way that is not obvious to the consumer. As a result, consumers can be injured by a dangerous condition and they had no way to have knowledge of it, or prevent the injury from occurring. Want to learn more about dangerous consumer products? Visit the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website. To file a claim for compensation after being injured by a dangerous or defective product, contact our Plano personal injury firm! Next: Possible Outcomes of a Personal Injury Claim
