What is product liability?
Transcript
That is any product, that is not under West Virginia law, that’s any product that’s not reasonably safe and causes an injury. And so, if a product causes an injury and the court finds, through our presentation that it’s not reasonably safe then that product is defective. A product is defective if we can prove that it’s not reasonably safe and so we have to demonstrate to the court that the product is not safe either because of its design or because of how it was manufactured and then we also have to demonstrate to the court that the product, not only that it’s unsafe but that it can be made safe through a reasonable alternative design. And so because there simply are some products that cannot be made safe, a knife is always going to be sharp, it’s always going to be dangerous there’s no way to make a knife safer, so to speak, and have it still serve as a knife. That’s one example. And so, what we do is we do the research to demonstrate that a product, when products who cause injuries. We’ve handled lots of product liability cases. And basically, that’s a fancy term for – did this product cause your injury for example a car, a motor vehicle, may take off without the driver ever putting their foot on the gas pedal. Well, I think most people would agree that’s not a safe car. And what we do is we do the research and we do the digging into the manufacturer to find out why that happens. It’s our job to do that research and that’s how we’ve gotten recoveries for people who were in car accidents for example and never realized that it was the cars fault. They may have thought it was their own fault or they may have thought that the action was the fault of some other driver when in reality their own car may have been defective. We’ve done that for cars, tractors, ATV’s, mining equipment. That’s part of the analysis here. Product liability cases require an understanding of design and manufacturing. And, that’s part of what I love about this job is some days I get to be an engineer, some days I get to be a design professional, but ultimately I have to yeild to the real experts and we work with some of the foremost experts in and design in terms of automobiles, farm equipment, ATV’s, things of that nature. It’s imperative that we work with experts to recognize if a product is unreasonably dangerous or if it’s defective and why. And how can we make it safer. So that’s a big part of what we do. It’s a big part of why I like the job so much because it is hands on and we have to we have to know what we’re talking about in varied subject areas. So, how do we know if if you have a product liability case? Simple, come see us. A lot of people come into the office with what you might think is is a straightforward car wreck might not be so straightforward. It might be a product liability case. If you find that you need to call a lawyer if you call us we’ll look at a case from every angle. A lot of times people come in here thinking they’ve had a simple car wreck when in reality the car was defective. If you come in and talk to us we’ll all talk to you and we’ll figure it out. And that’s how we know if you have a product liability case. The first question is have I been injured. And do I think I was injured wrongly. If you it through yes those questions give us a call. And then we can help walk you through that.