Product Liability Warranty and Strict Liability

Product Liability/Warranty and Strict Liability

Generally, when you buy a product, everyone in the “chain of distribution” of the product legally warrants, whether they intend to or not, that the product is reasonably safe.

The “chain of distribution” includes the manufacturer, distributors and stores where you bought the product (assuming that it is a store that commonly sells those products, as opposed to a seller of used goods, a flea market or the like). If you are injured by a defective product, you can potentially sue all of these entities. Furthermore, you do not have to prove negligence, it is enough that the product was defective.

However, you do have to prove that the injury was caused by a defect in the product. In other words, if you misused the product, by using it in a way that was not intended by the manufacturer or you damaged the product, you cannot sue.

The product has to have something wrong either with its design or have a part that breaks because it was not manufactured properly or something of that sort. For example, suppose you try to tow a 5,000 pound boat using your car that is designed and clearly marked as being able to tow only 1,000 pounds. If a wheel falls off because of the excess weight and you are injured, that is misuse of the car and you cannot sue.

However, suppose you are driving your car and the wheel falls off because the axle holding the wheel on had a crack in it from the manufacturing process. If you are injured, then you can sue under a warranty/ strict liability type of action.

There are actually some differences between warranty and strict liability legal theories and some states may not allow personal injury cases on a warranty theory. However, strict liability and warranty claims are similar enough that the end result is usually the same. The key is, you do not have to prove negligence. Here, the law favors the consumer.

Class Actions Lawsuits

Most people know generally what class action lawsuits are, but few know the technical details of how they work. Because class action lawsuits can be very complicated, I will not attempt a detailed explanation but will try to give a general understanding.

Sometimes a large number of people are harmed by the same act of negligence of some entity, commonly a large company.

For example, these situations frequently involve injuries caused to large numbers of people by a defective product. Imagine that a food manufacturer negligently sells food that is tainted by some sort of bacteria or toxin and hundreds or thousands of people get sick.

This is an example of the type of case that can support a class action lawsuit. Here is how it works. An personal injury attorney will be contacted by a client who was injured by the tainted food. The injury lawyer is then contacted by a couple of others who were also injured by the same food. The injury lawyer then discovers that hundreds of people in his or her state were injured by the same food and decides to file a class action lawsuit.

To do this, he or she will file a complaint with the named plaintiffs being the clients who had come to him. These plaintiffs will be called the “class representatives” because they will represent all of the injured people as the only ones with their names actually on the pleadings. Then, the injury lawyer must ask the personal injury judge to “certify the class.” This means that the personal injury judge must consider whether it is in the best interests of everyone involved to allow the case to proceed as a class action.

The factors that personal injury judges consider in deciding whether to certify a matter as a class action vary by jurisdiction but typically include such factors as: whether it would be possible or practical to name all of the injured persons separately; whether there is a close enough connection between each person’s injuries and the cause of the injuries; whether the defenses used by the defendant are likely to be the same with regard to all those injured; and whether the named plaintiffs, the class representatives, can fairly and competently represent the interests of all members of the class.

If the personal injury judge certifies the case as a class action, the injury lawyer will then be required to contact everyone who is a potential member of the class. In some cases, a list can be compiled of everyone who could possibly have a claim such as when the case involves a defect in a car, because all cars have to be titled.

In other cases, such as our food poisoning case, it is probably impossible to compile a list of everyone who was sickened by the food. So, the personal injury judge will require the injury lawyer to take other means of contacting the people who were injured. This might include publication in newspapers, magazines, television and radio advertisements or other means. The injury lawyer will be required to inform those people who are potential class members those who were injured by the tainted food that a class action lawsuit has been filed and that each injured person has the right to participate in the class action or else take steps to “opt out” of the class.

If they opt out of the class, they have the opportunity to bring a separate lawsuit on their own, for their injuries only. If someone fits into the class and does not opt out, she will be bound by the terms of whatever settlement or verdict is received by the class as a whole.

During the class action litigation, the named plaintiffs will make all the decisions typically made by clients about litigation which affect all members of the class and they have an obligation to act in the best interests of the class. However, in order to settle the case, the personal injury judge has to approve the settlement by determining whether it is fair and reasonable to the class members as a whole. That way, the named plaintiffs and injury lawyers cannot take advantage of the class members for their own personal benefit.

One thing that often confuses non-injury lawyers is the difference between a class action lawsuit and a multiple plaintiff lawsuit. If a lawsuit is filed with one hundred plaintiffs, the suit covers only those one hundred plaintiffs and all one hundred plaintiffs are named then it is not a class action.

Many people think that just because there are many plaintiffs to a lawsuit who were all injured by the same cause, that it is a class action lawsuit. This is not so. A lawsuit is only a class action when the actual lawsuit does not list the names of all of the plaintiffs but instead lists some plaintiffs by name as representatives of a class of persons similarly injured. If everyone’s name is listed in the lawsuit individually, it is not a class action even if there are a thousand plaintiffs. That is simply a multi plaintiff lawsuit.

Class action lawsuits can be very useful in our society. Sometimes many people are harmed by the actions of a big company, but their injuries are too small to justify the costs for each of them to bring their own lawsuit. Without class action lawsuits, companies would get the message that they can harm people without recourse, as long as the harm is too small to make it worthwhile for plaintiffs to sue individually. In that situation, class action lawsuits step in and allow many claims to be combined into one big lawsuit that is economically worthwhile to bring.