Defective Products and Dangerous Drugs

Injuries Resulting from Consumer Products

The United States imposes a number of obligations on the manufacturers of products, including a series of implied warranties. This includes an implied warranty of merchantability, which refers to the fact that goods must perform as a reasonable buyer would expect them to. Various laws in the US also impose requirements that manufacturers test their products to ensure their safety and make sure that products they release on the market are not harmful.

Some of the most stringent of the safety laws apply to food and drug products, which must be FDA approved, as well as automobiles due to the dangers associated with defective vehicles. Unfortunately, all the laws in the world can't and don't stop bad or dangerous products from finding their way to the market. In the event that you are harmed by a defective or dangerous product, you may be able to bring a product liability claim to hold the manufacturer of the product (or a group of other potential defendants) responsible.

What is Product Liability Law?

Product liability law is a body of personal injury or tort law that makes it possible for manufacturers, resellers, distributors and retailers of products to be held responsible for the products that they put on the market. Under this area of law, the entity who makes a defective product can be sued for damages. Sometimes, in fact, there are many potential people who can be sued for one defective product. If, for instance, a car is manufactured with bad brakes, the makers of the brakes as well as the makers of the vehicle, the distributors of the vehicle and the sales people of the vehicle could all face potential liability for the bad product.

What is the Standard Used in Product Liability Cases?

In most personal injury claims, a plaintiff has to prove negligence on the part of the defendant in order to collect damages. For example, if you go to someone's house, and everything is perfectly safe there, but you slip and fall anyway, you can't sue the homeowner because the homeowner didn't breach any duty to you or cause you harm in any particular way. In some product liability cases, negligence is also the standard, and manufacturer negligence must be proven in order for the manufacturer, reseller, distributor or wholesaler to be held liable.

More commonly, however, a different standard applies in product liability cases. This is called "strict liability", and it was first applied to product liability cases as a general rule by a 1963 California case called Greenman v. Yuba Power Products. Today, thanks in part to the inclusion of this rule in a legal guide called The Restatement of Torts, many states have also adopted strict liability rules.

Under the strict liability rules, a manufacturer, distributor,reseller or wholesaler does not necessarily have to have exhibited any negligence in order to be held legally and financially responsible for defects in the products that were produced. The manufacturer, instead, may be held liable if it is proven that there was a defect in the product that caused harm when the product was used as intended. Some states require that the defect be "unreasonably dangerous", but not all do, which means that in these states (like California), the manufacturer is going to be liable for any defect that causes harm, even if the defect isn't unreasonably unsafe.

Under strict liability standards, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and resellers can not only be liable to the party who bought the product, but also to any bystanders who were harmed by the defect as well.

What is a Defect?

Since any defect in a product can potentially lead to significant liability on the part of a manufacturer, distributor, wholesaler or reseller, it is essential to understand what a defect is. Defects can be grouped into the following three categories:

1. Manufacturing defects (a defect in the way in which a product is made).
2. Design defects (a defect that comes in the actual design of the product itself).
3. Marketing defects (a defect that comes in the failure to warn customers of potential risks and dangers associated with a product).

Any of these potential defects can lead to product liability claims.

What Does a Plaintiff Have to Prove?

Because of the strict liability standards in place, generally a plaintiff only has to prove the following:

1. That a defect existed.
2. That the defect was the direct or proximate cause of some type of harm when the product was being used for its normal purpose.
3. That injury resulted from the harm and can be compensated.

Usually, the most difficult aspect of product liability claims is causation. For example, if someone wanted to sue a cigarette manufacturer for failure to warn about the dangers of the product, and asserting that he/she got lung cancer because of using the products, the plaintiff would have to prove that the cigarettes were the direct cause of the lung cancer and that the cancer wouldn't have happened if he/she hadn't been smoking. This is pretty tricky, since there can also be environmental and other causes of lung cancer too, so the cancer can't directly be traced back to the cigarette manufacturers.

Usually, proving a product liability case comes down to expert testimony. This means that some experts will have to be able to testify as to the fact that a defect occurred and will also have to testify that the defect was the cause of injury. The company is probably going to have their own experts too, so the case may come down to a battle of the expert witnesses, if the case goes to court at all.

Settlement of Product Liability Cases

While a plaintiff does have the burden of proof in court, many product liability cases never actually go so far as to see the inside of a court room. Manufacturers and others involved in the distribution and sale of products normally have liability insurance to protect them from lawsuits, and some even have contingency funds designed to allow them to settle lawsuits with disgruntled or injured customers. There are a few reasons why settlement is likely in product liability cases, but the two most important reasons are that manufacturers usually want to avoid the risk of a jury trial and that manufacturers usually want to avoid bad publicity.

It would not be very good for a company's reputation to be seen in the news regularly while a long trial is asserting that the manufacturer's product is harmful. Furthermore, many juries who are made up of average laypeople would feel sympathetic toward a plaintiff who was injured by a company and might award a large damage to the plaintiff to make the "big bad" corporation pay the "little guy" who it harmed. The cost of legal fees for a long and protracted trial can also be quite high for a company, and settlement may just make more financial sense.

Continued: Defective Products and Dangerous Drugs: Page 2

Next Steps

6. Car Accident Cases
7. Medical Malpractice
8. Toxic Torts

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