What You Need for a Product Liability Lawsuit
Products sold to consumers should be safe.
Unsafe products can cause serious injury and even death.
If you are injured by an unsafe product, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries under the Connecticut Products Liability Act against the manufacturer or seller of the product.
However, bringing a products liability claim is complex and requires a skilled and experienced product liability attorney to help you with the process.
An experienced attorney will help you determine if the product was defective, who the responsible party is, and why that party is responsible. In addition, they will help you understand what type of compensation you may be able to claim as a result of your damages.
Defective Products
In product liability lawsuit cases, you must show that the product had a defect. Products can be defective in several ways:
- Defective design. Something about the design makes the product dangerous. When there is a design defect, you see defects across the entire product line. For example, a defective steering wheel design will make all cars with that design dangerous.
- Defective manufacture. The product’s manufacturing is dangerous. With manufacturing defects, the product is not made according to its design specifications, which are safe. Only a handful of products in a product line might be defective.
- Failure to warn. The manufacturer did not provide the necessary safety warnings or instructions so that consumers could minimize the risks when using the product.
You may not know why the product was defective. If you are injured it is important to contact an experience attorney right away. You should also preserve what remains of the product and its packaging so that your attorney can look at it. Sometimes, an expert witness needs to test or analyze the product to see if it is defective.
Bases of Liability
The responsible party may be liable for you injuries for a number of reasons:
- Negligence. A party is negligent when it is acts unreasonably in the design, manufacture, or marketing of a product.
- Strict liability. A party may be subject to strict liability in some cases when a product is defective in its design or its manufacture. This may also be available when a party fails to adequately warn a consumer about a dangerous product.
- Breach of warranty. Consumers expect products to work a certain way. When they fail to, and an injury occurs because of that failure, consumers may be able to bring a lawsuit.
Injured consumers are not expected to figure out what legal theory to use.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each, and choosing one (or more) requires close analysis of the facts, including who was injured and when. For more information, please contact an attorney experienced in product liability lawsuit cases.
Using the Product as Intended
The most common defenses to a products liability claim is that you did not use the product as it was intended, or that the product was modified in some way beyond what could be reasonably expected. For example, using the lid of a trash can as a snow sled is not an intended use.
To help defend against a claim that you did not use the product as intended, you should write down your memories of how you used the product. These memories will help establish you used the product properly. In addition, you should also keep a record if you modified the product, how you did so, and why.
Effective Legal Representation
Bringing a product liability lawsuit requires careful planning, and injured consumers should contact an experienced attorney right away. To speak with a lawyer at StangerLaw LLC, please call or send us an online message.
