Personal Injury Attorney

Manufacturers and designers are legally obligated to provide their customers with products they can use with confidence. No one wants to invest in a brand new vacuum cleaner, just to have the bag burst during the first use. Additionally, some products can become dangerous if they malfunction, resulting in severe injuries for innocent customers. If you have been injured as a result of a defective or malfunctioning product, you could file a product liability claim. Here is what you will need for a valid claim.

Injury or Damage

Injury is one of the first things you will have to prove in your product liability case. If you were not injured by the malfunctioning product, then your case will not be viable. Let’s say you just bought a new desk lamp. You sit down, switch it on and start typing away on your laptop. Immediately, the lightbulb that came with the lamp begins to spark. You leap out of the way before it shatters and you knock your laptop to the floor as you fall. Luckily, your laptop and you are completely fine. In this situation—although the product did malfunction—you would not be able to file a product liability claim since you would not be able to prove that injury or damage occurred as a result of the malfunctioning desk lamp.

Defect

Next, you will have to prove that the product was defective. There are three different ways to file this claim:

1. Error in Manufacturing – The item in question was damaged or broken during the manufacturing process. This is usually the easiest product liability claim to prove since you will have physical proof of the defect.
2. Error in Design – The item in question is dangerous because of a flawed design. This can become more difficult to prove, since you will ultimately need to cite a specific design flaw that made the item dangerous.  
3. Error in Messaging – The item in question has dangers not communicated to the customer. In this case, labelling is important. The manufacturer should provide sufficient warnings regarding any dangers linked to the product. 

The Defect Caused Your Injury

You will also need to prove that your injury was specifically caused by the product defect. Spraining your thumb while leaping away from a sparking desk lamp might be harder to prove then showing an arm full of burns you received when the sparks hit your skin.

If you were using a product as it was intended and you were injured when it malfunctioned, you could eligible to file a product liability claim. Worried that you don’t have all the elements for a valid claim? Reach out to a product defect liability attorney, like a personal injury attorney from Rispoli & Borneo, P.C., and see what your claim could be worth.