Los Angeles Defective Product Lawyers

With the complexity of modern society, nobody makes all the tools, appliances, and equipment they use on a daily basis. Instead, we buy products, trusting that they were designed, manufactured, and labeled properly for safe use. But often these products do not live up to our trust. Sometimes they fail dangerously, resulting in serious injury or death. When that happens, you have the legal right to hold the designer, manufacturer, and retailers responsible for the injuries their product caused.

At Fisher & Talwar, we stand ready to help you get compensation when a defective product causes serious injury to you or a loved one. We have helped many people get compensation for medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and more. We can help you, too. Please contact us today for a free consultation. There’s no obligation: just get your questions answered by a lawyer for free.

Types of Product Liability Cases

Under California law, everyone in a product’s supply chain is responsible for ensuring that the product is safe. This includes the product’s designer, patent-holder, or intellectual property owner. It also includes manufacturers, both of the final assembly and each component part. Finally, it includes retailers who sell the product to customers. With all the numerous products out there, there are many different potential types of product lawsuits, but in general, they break down into three basic categories: 

• Design defects: When a product is unsafe as designed for its intended uses or foreseeable misuses, this is a design defect. Products that have a defective design mean that all products of that line are dangerous, not just isolated examples. It’s important to come forward if you are injured by this type of product so that we can get it off the market before too many other people are hurt.
• Manufacturing defects: Sometimes products are designed properly, but during the manufacturing process, they experience problems that negatively impact their properties. These manufacturing defects might be the result of deliberate cost-cutting decisions, or they could be simply accidental. Materials that aren’t as strong as they should be, poor welds, weak adhesives, improper assembly by humans or robots, and more could make the products dangerous. They are unsafe for their intended uses or foreseeable misuses. Reporting these types of defects can help identify their source and stop more defective products from being made. 
• Marketing defects: Sometimes, products might be safe in some ways, but they aren’t as safe as they are marketed. Marketing defects usually fall into two types: failure to warn and breach of warranty. In failure to warn defects, the instructions don’t provide sufficient instructions to ensure the product is used properly and to warn against foreseeable misuse. In breach of warranty cases, the product’s marketing makes promises or guarantees that the product doesn’t live up to. In these cases, trying to use the product as advertised can cause it to fail, leading to serious injury or death. Reporting these types of injuries can cause products to change their marketing, helping to avoid future injuries.

It’s possible that your product had more than one type of defect, even all three at the same time. 

Examples of Defective Products That Cause Injuries

Not all products are equally dangerous. However, some products can have defects that regularly result in serious injury or death. Some of the more common types of dangerous products include:

• Tires: Defective tires can automatically render a vehicle unstable. Tread separation or catastrophic sidewall blowout can make accidents essentially inevitable.
• Seat belts: A defective seatbelt might fail to restrain someone in an accident or fail to release after an accident, trapping someone in a dangerous vehicle.
• Secondary restraints: Defective secondary restraint systems like airbags can go off when there’s no accident, causing an accident, or fire in a way that causes more injuries than it prevents.
• Car seats: Defective car seats might fail to hold a child in place during an accident, which might also be due to complex design or faulty installation instructions. Or the car seat might restrict a baby’s breathing, leading to hypoxia injury.
• Children’s toys: These can have parts that break off and create a choking hazard, or might have components that can go over a child’s mouth and nose, restricting access to air. Sharp, broken edges can cut a child. 
• Home appliances: Poorly designed appliances can catch fire, electrocute an operator, or even explode.
• Power tools: Defective power tools can cause serious injury even when used as intended. In addition, power tools often don’t have sufficient instructions to avoid misuse.
• Furniture: Cheap or poorly manufactured furniture can collapse during use, resulting in serious injury. Other times, furniture might be unstable, causing it to fall over, injuring children or adults. 
• Clothes and linens: Clothing and bed linens often fail to live up to fire resistance standards, meaning they can easily catch on fire and sustain a fire, leading to injury or death. In addition, some children’s clothing has dangerous buttons that a child could choke on.
• Pharmaceutical drugs: These have so many independent complications that we have a separate page dedicated to pharmaceutical drug injuries.

These are some of the most common types of defective products, but it is not an exhaustive list. If you’ve been injured by any type of product, it’s important to contact a lawyer. 

Elements of a Successful Product Liability Case

Product liability lawsuits aren’t generally about negligence. You don’t have to prove that the company that designed, manufactured, or sold the product acted negligently. Instead, you just have to show that:

• You didn’t substantially modify the product after buying it – the defect existed in the product as purchased
• You used the product as intended or misused it in a foreseeable way
• The product’s defect caused a significant injury

If we can establish these facts, then you should be able to get compensation for your injuries. 

Who Can I Sue for a Defective Product Injury?

Under California law, anyone responsible for designing, manufacturing, and/or selling a defective product bears some responsibility when the product causes injury. The specific people you can sue will depend on the circumstances of your case, but, in general, they might include:

• Product designer, trademark holder, or patent holder: When a product has design defects. 
• Individual part manufacturer: When a specific part of the product is defective. 
• Overall product manufacturer: When the product has any manufacturing defect.
• Labeler or marketing company: When the product has defective or insufficient instructions, which contributed to injury. 
• Retailer: Retailers have a responsibility to ensure the safety of the products they sell. 

The amount of compensation you are offered by each liable party will depend on how responsible they feel for their role in causing the product defect. If the compensation offered is not enough, we can take the parties to court, and the court will allocate liability according to the evidence. 

Can I Sue If I Was “Misusing” a Product?

In most cases, you can get compensation for a defective product injury even if you were “misusing” the product at the time. Often, the misuse is foreseeable and might even be the result of insufficient instructions on the proper use of the product. Unless a misuse was unforeseeable by the product designer or explicitly discouraged in the instructions, it isn’t necessarily a reason why you can’t get compensation. 

Defective Products and Manufacturer Recalls

When product manufacturers learn that their product causes injuries, they may institute a product recall. In addition, the government has the power to order a recall if the manufacturer doesn’t. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) maintains a list of recent recalls.

The defective product that injured you may or may not be on the CPSC’s recall list. Just because it’s not subject to recall does not mean it isn’t defective. You might be among the first people injured by the product (but not necessarily the last). The manufacturer might be trying to suppress knowledge of the defect. If that’s the case, they might try to keep you from reporting your injuries by offering a generous settlement with a nondisclosure clause. 

Product liability does not depend on the existence of a recall. A recall is strong evidence of a product defect, but if it doesn’t exist, our product liability lawyers can find independent evidence to prove the existence of a defect. 

What to Do After a Defective Product Injury

If you are injured by a defective product, taking the right steps can preserve your right to compensation. Here’s how to make sure you can still seek compensation after your product injury:

• Get medical care: Getting medical care for your injuries will help document the severity of those injuries and head off complications. Showing that you took the injuries seriously and sought appropriate care will protect you from claims that your injuries were minor or preexisting. 
• Save the defective product: The product that caused you injury is an essential piece of evidence in your case. In addition to the product, preserve as much of the packaging and instructions as you can. Locate the receipt and place it with the rest of the records. If you have an e-receipt, print or download it so you have a copy saved locally.
• Consult a product liability lawyer: Defective product injuries are legally complicated. Talking to a lawyer can help you understand your options and when you might be able to get compensation for your injuries. 
• Report the defective product: You should report the defective product to the manufacturer, retailer, and CPSC. If you have decided to work with a lawyer, they can handle these reports for you. 
• Limit public conversation about your injury: Talking about your injury, your recovery, and the responsible product with other people and/or on social media can impact your case. Your lawyer will give you guidelines for this. Follow them. 

If you follow these steps, you will improve your odds of getting compensation for your defective product injuries. 

Why Choose Fisher & Talwar for Your Product Liability Case

If you have been injured by a defective product, many lawyers will want to take your case. Choose your defective product lawyer carefully, as nothing will have as big an impact on your experience of the case and its aftermath. We believe that Fisher & Talwar is the best choice for your product liability lawsuit because we offer:

• A successful track record: We have won up to $6 million in an individual product liability case for a client. We understand product liability law and how to build a successful case. Check out our successful verdicts and settlements page for more of our cases.
• Personal attention: At Fisher & Talwar, your case will be handled personally by one of our partners, not handed off to a junior attorney. We can do this because we are very selective of the cases we take. We will only take your case if we are convinced that we are the best law firm for you. If not, we will tell you who might be a better fit for your case.
• No win, no fee: You only pay us a fee if we win compensation for you. The last thing your family needs now is an additional bill. We will only ask you to pay us if we win money to help you pay your other bills. 
• You never pay our expenses: All our expenses are included in our fees. Other lawyers might offer you a lower fee but expect you to pay their expenses at the end of the case, whether they win money for you or not. 

A Free Consultation for Your Product Liability Case

We understand: you might not know all your options after suffering a defective product injury. That’s why we offer a free initial consultation. You can call us and ask all your questions. You’ll get genuine answers that you can trust. There’s no obligation, and the consultation is completely confidential. Please contact us today for a free consultation with a product liability lawyer at Fisher & Talwar.

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