Proving Your Defective Product Case In Florida
Corbin Sutter
Personal Injury
While vehicles tend to get all the attention when it comes to defective product cases, those certainly aren’t the only defective products out there causing harm or injury to consumers. Vehicle recalls like the recent large-scale Ford and Volkswagen recalls of 2021 get plenty of publicity, but any consumer product, from tools to kitchen appliances, runs the risk of being defective once brought home. Defective product cases can be tricky, but with a skilled personal injury lawyer on your side you can get the compensation you deserve. In defective product cases, your entire case rests on your evidence. Whether it’s evidence of the physical defect in the product, or evidence that you were using the product correctly when the injury occurred, there is a lot of legwork that comes along with sufficiently proving your defective product case. Your personal injury attorney can walk you through this evidence collection process, ensuring that you build a strong case that is difficult to challenge.
Different Types Of Defective Product Claims
A defective product claim isn’t a blanket statement, and there are different types of defective product claim categories you’ll need to investigate to determine which best fits your case. These different types of claims are:
• Defective manufacturing – Defective manufacturing cases refer to products that were manufactured incorrectly leading to the defect and injury.
• Defective design – Defective design cases refer to products that were manufactured correctly, but a flaw in the design lead to the defect and subsequent injury. These can be some of the more difficult defective product cases to prove.
• Failure to warn – In failure to warn cases, the product was designed and manufactured correctly, but consumers were not sufficiently warned of the dangers that came along with correct use of the product. For instance, if a consumer were to purchase an electric kettle and the kettle’s handle tends to get hot when the unit is turned on, a consumer who suffers a burn trying to grab the kettle’s handle may have a failure to warn case.
The type of case you’re working with will likely impact just how you build your case, provide evidence, and how it’s defended. A case of defective manufacturing will require different evidence backing that claim than a failure to warn.
Backing Up Your Defective Product Case
When providing your defective product case, you’ll need to prove that you were using the product as the product was intended to be used, you’ll need to prove that the product was in some way defective, that you were injured, and that it’s the product’s defect that directly caused your injury. In other words, you must prove that if the product was not defective, you would not have suffered injury using the product at all.
Alongside your personal injury lawyer in the North Port area of Florida, you’ll gather some base evidence to be used to back up your defective product case. Some evidence that will be gathered to back up your case will include:
• The defective product – The defective product itself is an important piece of evidence. If the product is in pieces, the leftover pieces of the product can tell an informative story of the defect as well.
• Evidence of manufacturing defects – If you’re working with a defective manufacturing case, evidence that the manufacturer had knowledge of the defect like memos or e-mails are helpful to your case.
• Medical bills and payroll information – Medical bills and payroll information will serve as evidence of your monetary damages. Your medical bills will additionally outline the treatments you’ve received, as well as any ongoing treatment you may require going forward.
• Photos of the product and injuries – Immediately following the accident, or as soon as possible, take photos of the product, your injuries, and the scene of the incident. This will serve as important evidence of just how severe your injuries may have been and how the product lead to those injuries.
• Witness statements – If others were present when the incident occurred, their witness statements can corroborate your story.
• Labels and marketing materials – Labels and marketing materials can serve to prove that the product was used correctly, and that there may have been a failure to warn in regard to unseen dangers.