The holidays seem to bring out the products like few other times throughout the year. Products are given as gifts. Products are received as gifts. People are buying and installing Christmas and other holiday decorations. People are using new products that they may have just received. Fortunately, manufacturers and others in the chain of product production have a duty to provide consumers with safe products. Unfortunately, this duty is not always upheld and people can be seriously injured as a result. Let us talk more about potential product liability claims that can arise during the holiday season.
Common Liability Claims After the Holidays
First, let us go over some of the basics of product liability claims. Product liability claims can arise from three different types of product defects. The first being design defects. When a product is defective in its design, it does not matter if it is manufactured exactly according to the design specifications, it will still be dangerous because the danger is inherent in the product design.
This is different from the second kind of defect, which is manufacturing defects. When a product is dangerous due to a flaw arising from how it is made, the danger came in the form of the product not being made according to its design. With manufacturing defects, it is usually not all of an available product that is dangerous, but a bad batch of a product that was, for one reason or another, improperly made at the manufacturing level.
The third type of product defect is a failure to warn defect. If the product designer knows that there are inherent dangers in a product, even when it is perfectly designed and flawlessly manufactured, the designer has a duty to warn consumers of these dangers as well as how the product should be safely used.
Should a gift, such as a toy, have one of these kinds of defects that render it dangerous and the toy injures someone as a result, you may be able to bring a product liability claim seeking compensation for the injury suffered. This is also true of new power tools you may have received, or any dangers associated with your holiday decorations. For instance, lights to decorate houses have sometimes caused things like housefires. This could lead to a product liability claim.
Philadelphia Personal Injury Attorneys
At Cooper Schall & Levy we hope that you and yours have had a safe, injury-free holiday season. If you or a loved one has been injured by a dangerously defective product, however, we are here to provide you with zealous legal representation. Injury caused by a dangerously defective product can make more than your holiday season difficult. We are here to tirelessly pursue the full and fair compensation to which you are legally entitled. When a manufacturer, product designer, or someone else in the product distribution chain fails to uphold their duty to provide safe products and injury results, we are here for you. Contact us today.
