Four Types Of Product Liability: Does Your Case Fit Any Of These Types?
ShareYou bought a product or service, and it harmed you in some way. You may have a product liability lawsuit on your hands. Only a product liability lawyer can say for sure, but the following types of product liability may help you decide whether a consultation with a lawyer is a good idea.
The Product Burned, Scarred, or Maimed You (Injury Type)
There are dozens of cases where products purchased caused burns, from coffee to hair perming solutions. Scars left from injuries caused by products also qualify. If a product maimed you to the point that you had to have a body part removed, you definitely have a case. All of these examples fall under the type of product liability known as an strict liability/injury case.
The Product Killed Someone Close to You
Products are not supposed to kill you. If you used a medication or drove a car, both of these items are examples of products that should have passed rigorous testing prior to being sold on the market. When products kill, it is because there was something wrong with it to begin with, and the manufacturer pushed it through anyway or an intermediate seller experienced some level of tampering with the product. Either way, you are looking at a type of product liability case known as negligence. It means that a manufacturer or seller failed to either fix the problem in production or failed to identify and fix a problem prior to sale.
The Product Did Not Deliver What Was Promised
Truth in advertising is an oxymoron. The whole point to advertising is to get you to buy a product or service. When the product or service does not live up to the hype or the promises made on either the packaging or in the advertising, you can sue.
For example, you purchased software that was supposed to protect proprietary information for your company. Instead, it opened a back door that let hackers into your system and tons of company-specific information became public knowledge or was sold on the dark web. The software you purchased utterly failed its promise to protect your company's interests, which means you can sue for all the damages it caused your company and your company's customers, shareholders, etc.
This is typically known as product/service fraud because you paid a lot of money to get something that was supposed to do what it promised to do and failed. You cannot get your money back, because you already tried or used the product. In the above example, you are not only out the money for the protective software, but you are out hundreds of thousands to billions of dollars because the software failed.
Breach of Warranty
Breach of warranty is similar to the above product/service fraud. The main difference here is that you are suing because the product broke down, and despite being under warranty, the manufacturer or seller failed or fails to honor the terms of the warranty.
This type of product liability claim is uncommon, and most breach of warranty cases are easily settled out of court, which is why you are not likely to hear about them. Typically, your lawyer would meet with the company's lawyer and just agree to pay you for the product and legal fees and be done with it. As long as the product brought zero harm to you and/or your family and home, the settlement is acceptable.
For more information about the different kinds of product liability cases, contact an attorney at offices like Bennett Law Firm PC. An attorney can help you through the process and get the compensation you deserve.