Explaining Your Product Liability Case

Product liability is a legal doctrine that allows individuals to sue businesses and manufactures for damages when a product causes personal injury or death. These types of cases are considered negligence cases. DeKeyzer Law can help in explaining your product liability case below. 

Product Design Defect Cases

Most consumer goods receive extensive research and development before the product is introduced into the stream of commerce. During this developmental phase companies attempt to identify and correct potential problems or hazards about the new products. As the research progresses, companies must make decisions regarding the safety of developing products, and safety design decisions are invariably made in the shadow of profitability. When a company chooses a design that creates an unreasonable risk of harm to consumers it creates the potential for a design defect case. In other words, a company has a duty to create and distribute reasonably safe consumer products.

Although this may sound simple, product design defect cases are complex and challenging because law makers are forced to balance the public interest with the right of free enterprise. Law makers and courts have created laws and balancing test to achieve legal equilibrium. Courts have determined that to recover compensation resulting from a design defect case plaintiffs must prove:

1. The product was defectively designed so as to render the product unreasonably dangerous;
2. A safer design for the product was available; and
3. The defect was the cause of the personal injury for which the plaintiff seeks financial recovery.   

When Is A Product Unreasonably Dangerous?

As this term is difficult to define, Texas courts apply a risk-utility analysis based on the facts of the case to determine if a product is unreasonably dangerous. The Supreme Court of Texas in Timpte Indus. V. Gish 286 S.W.3d 306 (Tex. 2009) discussed the five factors below:

1. the utility of the product to the user and to the public as a whole weighed against the gravity and likelihood of injury from its use;
2. the availability of a substitute product which would meet the same need and not be unsafe or unreasonably expensive;
3. the manufacturer’s ability to eliminate the unsafe character of the product without seriously impairing its usefulness or significantly increasing its costs;
4. the user’s anticipated awareness of the dangers inherent in the product and their avoidability because of general public knowledge of the obvious condition of the product, or of the existence of suitable warnings or instructions; and
5. the expectations of the ordinary consumer.

The Court further stated that these five factors cannot be analyzed in a vacuum and must be judged against the context of the product’s intended use and its intended user. What this means is that there will never be a simple test to determine the dangerousness of a product and that each case will be scrutinized and analyzed under its own set of facts.

Manufacturing Defect Cases

Manufacturing defect cases are slightly simpler in terms of determining the defect because this defect occurs after the design phase. Conversely to design defect cases that effect the entire product, manufacturing defect cases typically arise in isolated batches or regional areas. For example, a vehicle manufacture may decide to build a new truck in five different manufacturing facilities, but only one facility had a faulty part so the trucks from the one facility are defective. Another aspect here is manufacturing defect cases usually give rise to what is called strict liability which lessens the burden on the plaintiff for a successful monetary recovery.

What Is A Marketing Defect Case

A marketing defect case occurs when a product is sold without adequate warnings or improper instructions. The plaintiff’s injury must be directly related to the risk that was not warned about. This type of products liability lawsuit is common in the pharmaceutical industry when a drug manufacturer fails to warn about side effects or potential risks of taking medicines.    

In Texas, to establish a strict products liability marketing defect claim, a plaintiff must prove the following elements:

1. A risk of harm is inherent in the product or may arise from the intended or reasonably anticipated use of the product;
2. The product supplier actually knew or should have reasonably foreseen the risk of harm at the time the product was marketed;
3. The product contains a marketing defect;
4. The absence of a warning and/or instructions renders the product unreasonably dangerous to the ultimate user or consumer of the product; and
5. The failure to warn and/or instruct must constitute a causative nexus in the product user’s injury.

When Must I File A Product Liability Lawsuit?

Texas law requires product liability lawsuits to be filed within two years of the injury or wrongful death. This means the injury victim or the family of a person killed must file a lawsuit within two years of discovering the injury producing event. DeKeyzer law can help in Explaining Your Product Liability Case and when the statute of limitations would expire for your particular situation.

Alvin Personal Injury Lawyers Fighting For Texas Size Justice

Meagan and Holland DeKeyzer are Texas Made Lawyers fighting for Texas Size Justice. The DeKeyzer Law Firm has been representing injury victims and their families since 2013. DeKeyzer Law Firm has over twenty years of combined personal injury litigation experience. We accept product liability and personal injury cases on a contingency agreement meaning you only pay attorney’s fees when we win the case. We offer free case consultations so call DeKeyzer Law at (713) 904-4004 anytime and we can help in explaining your product liability case.