PENNSYLVANIA PRODUCTS LIABILITY LAW

INTRODUCTION

We live in an often fast-paced and very technical world. The products we buy are no longer made by the small company down the street. Rather, we buy many products that are mass produced. Many times, the companies that mass produce these products will only check perhaps one out of every 1,000 products before shipping those products for you and your family to use. Many of these products are made in foreign countries. Many products are mass assembled, they are put together from parts made by the lowest bidder or made in overseas factories. Some of the parts may not be quite right but they are put together anyway and the product is sold to you and your family. Sometimes, companies are blinded by the profit motive, if they can save a few pennies during the mass production process, even if those pennies relate to safety features, the product will be made on the cheap and it will be sold in this unsafe condition to you and your family. Some companies are just not concerned about your safety.

Which products are covered?

Product liability law applies to almost every item that you use at home, at work and at play. All of these things, your child's toy, your recreational and sporting goods, the tools and utensils you use around your home and garden, the equipment you use at the office or in the factory, all of these things are products controlled by product liability law. Even component parts of the products that you use on a day-to-day basis are covered by the product liability laws. The item or one of its components, the car or its brake system, the bicycle or its front fork, the table saw or its guard, the toy or its lead painted piece, the recreational equipment or its sharp-edged piece, can be the product which is the focus of a defective product case.

Who is responsible for defective products?

Product liability law holds that anyone who designs, manufactures, sells or otherwise distributes a defective product can be held responsible for the injuries caused by that defective product. Suppose your child gets injured by a defective toy that was designed and manufactured overseas, brought to the United States by a California importer, sold wholesale by a national distributor to a national toy store chain and eventually sold by that toy store to you. Each one of those companies, the foreign designer and manufacturer, the importer, the distributor and finally the retail toy store may be held responsible for your child's injuries from a defective product. Some states have different laws in this regard but an experienced attorney will track down all the parties who may be responsible even though this can be a difficult process.

What if I am also responsible?

Those companies that manufacture and market products are obligated to consider how their products will likely be used by reasonable, average consumers. These companies must anticipate that consumers will not always use a particular product in the exactly correct fashion. For example, the manufacturer of a large paper cutting machine failed to place a guard over the rotating cutter. The worker who gets injured there because he tried quickly to reach into that area of the machine to clear a jam or the worker who accidentally slips on the factory floor and gets his hand injured there may bring a product liability claim against the manufacturer. The manufacturer may argue that it did not intend workers to place their hands in that area of the machine. The manufacturer may argue that it was the worker's fault for slipping on the floor.

However, product liability law requires that the manufacturer anticipate these kinds of injuries. It is certainly reasonable to expect that workers might be injured by these occurrences. Thus, although the manufacturer will argue that the injury was the worker's own fault, the worker will indeed have a product liability claim against the manufacturer. In many states, the jury deciding the case will only be allowed to consider whether the paper cutting machine itself was defective, the jury will be instructed not to reduce any damages award even if the worker could have been a little more careful. In many states, these types of issues, known as comparative fault or comparative negligence, are not relevant in product liability cases. An experienced lawyer can assess your actions and the product itself and advise you if a product liability claim should be pursued.

I got hurt, what should I do?

Certainly, the first thing that must be done after an injury is to obtain the proper medical care. Try your best to describe accurately how the accident occurred when you are asked to do so by the medical personnel. For your potential product liability claim, it is very important to preserve the evidence. You may be inclined to immediately throw away the toy that injured your child. While you certainly do not want anyone else to play with this toy, do not throw it away. Rather, save the toy or whatever product is involved and make sure that no one changes it or tampers with it. You should make the product available to your attorney as soon as possible. If you get injured at work, ask your employer to save the product. Contacting your attorney promptly after an accident occurs is very important in a product liability case.

Sometimes, people are injured from products that they purchased. In those cases, you should provide your attorney with the receipt for the product if you still have it. You should also provide the attorney with the box or any instruction booklet for the product. Information about where the product was purchased is also important. You may have pictures of the product or pictures of where the accident occurred and these would be helpful. Certainly you should give your attorney copies of any medical records and you should give your attorney information about your lost wages.

However, many times, the injured person was not the one who purchased the product and may not even be the one who was using the product. For example, if you were injured at work, you may not have information about when or where the defective tools or equipment were purchased. If your neighbor is using a snow blower and, because of a manufacturing defect, the metal blade fractures and a piece flies off and injures you, you may not have any information about where or when the snow blower was purchased. Asking your employer or the product owner to preserve the product and contacting a lawyer promptly is critical to preserving important evidence for a product liability claim.

What can I recover in a product liability claim?

Product liability claims are brought on behalf of injured persons to compensate them for those injuries. The compensation is in the form of money damages and the amount that can be recovered varies from person to person. Generally, the total amount of money damages that a person can recover consists of the sum of various categories of damages. For example, a person who is injured because of a defective product can recover what are called compensatory damages, these are damages designed to compensate you for your medical bills, your lost wages and your out-of-pocket expenses like payments for household help and medical supplies. Compensatory damages also consist of future losses, for example, you may no longer be able to work or may only be able to work part-time or in a sedentary or lower paying job. Thus, you may be entitled to recover not only past lost wages but also future lost wages. Similarly, you may require medical treatment for many years to come, the cost of that future medical care can be recovered. Thus, compensatory damages consist of your financial losses, they should put you in the financial position you would have reached if you were never injured by the defective product.

The second category or type of damages consists of pain and suffering damages. The judge or jury or perhaps the arbitrator or mediator will be asked to evaluate the pain and suffering caused by this injury and to consider how the injury has affected your lifestyle, your ability to perform your activities of daily living, your ability to raise your family, to participate in sports and to enjoy your hobbies.

Your spouse may also have a claim for loss of consortium. These damages are designed to compensate your spouse for the impact upon him or her caused by your injury. Even though your spouse may not have been directly injured by the defective product, your spouse can recover these damages if, for example, your spouse must take care of you or assume many more responsibilities for you, your family or your home.

Conclusion

Although some companies do produce reasonably safe products, we are still very often exposed to defective products and many people each year are injured by those defective products. Product liability claims can be complicated cases, an expert engineer may be needed to examine the defective product and offer an opinion as to whether it should have been manufactured or designed differently. An experienced attorney can work with mechanical, electrical and industrial engineers and analyze in great detail all aspects of the design and manufacturing process associated with the defective product. Although it can be very expensive to hire engineers and completely analyze a defective product, we initially pay those expenses and we recover those expenses only if we win your case by obtaining a verdict or reaching a settlement. Product liability cases are complicated and are best handled by experienced lawyers who are familiar not only with product liability laws but also with engineering principles and the appropriate engineering analyses.

While statistics and our own experience show that many cases settle before trial, we prepare each case with the assumption that we will have to present your case to a jury. We study the product and work with our expert engineers so we can explain, in clear terms to the jury, all of the sometimes complex, scientific and technical issues that arise in product liability cases. Our willingness to present our cases to a jury reflects the confidence we have in our ability to prove that the product that injured our client was indeed defective and that our client truly and rightly deserves to be compensated for those injuries. This approach certainly enhances favorable settlements for our clients.