subject: Defective Product Claims Process by:Mark Dacanay [print this page] Under product liability laws, a person can file for a defective product claim if he/she gets injured as a result of that defect.
Defective product claims are different from other personal injury cases where negligence is the prime point that the plaintiff has to prove.
In a defective product claim, instead of proving the negligence of the manufacturers, the plaintiff and his/her attorneys just have to prove that there is a defect and that defect caused the injury.
This is due to the statute of strict liability that covers the product liability law.
Strict liability refers to the law statute that makes manufacturers responsible for the defects on the product whether there was negligence or not.
In this statute, instead of focusing on negligence, the focus is given to the product itself.
The aim of the plaintiff is to prove that there was a defect on the product. There are three kinds of defect, they are:
Design defect - These are flaws that are inherent on the design of the product. Since it is on the design, all manufactured and produced products that has that specific design will be considered defective.
Manufacturing defect - These refers to defects that comes out during the manufacturing process. It does not necessarily have to affect the whole batch of production. It may just affect certain portions when the error happened.
Marketing Defect - These refers to the failure of the manufacturer to inform customers of the dangers of the product. It may also refer to the lack of instructions on how to use the said product.
Once the defect is proven to exist, the plaintiff would also need to prove that the defect caused the injury.
Actual and Proximate cause has to be established to win the case.
Actual cause - The defect directly caused the injury.
Proximate cause - If not for the defect, the injury would not have occurred.
Once it is proven that the defective product caused the injuries, the damages will be computed to come up with a fair compensation.
The most obvious damages would be economic losses like lost income, past and future medical expenses, and other monetary things that the plaintiff lost.
Then there are non-economic damages where, it assigns a dollar value to things that usually do not have an exact value. These are things like pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, etc.
Defective product claims also serve another purpose. It calls attention to a product that may potentially dangerous to the public.
Once a defective product claim is made and investigated to be true, the government may step in and ask the manufacturers to issue a product recall to remove the said products from the market.
This also gives manufacturers a chance to rectify the mistakes and avoid multiple lawsuits, not to mention avoiding a smear on their reputation.
So if you have been injured as a result of a defective product, make sure to report it to the appropriate government agency.
You should also consult a product recall attorney to help in filing a defective product claim against the manufacturer.
