Philadelphia Product Liability Lawyer

So whenever you have a potential product liability claim, you can have really three different kinds of potential defects. And that’s what we at Fulginiti Law will evaluate the product. And we have different types of experts, whether they’re engineers or human factors experts or or specific types of engineers. Product can be designed improperly or poorly for some reason. It. Maybe it should have two bolts and it only has one. Maybe it should have an 8 inch post and it only has a 6 inch post. Whatever it might be, we evaluate all of those factors. It could be manufactured improperly. Meaning the design if you follow the design, it would have been fine, but for whatever reason in the manufacturing process or even the assembly process that was not manufactured properly. So there you would have a manufacturing what they call a manufacturing defect. And then finally, you could have uh improper warnings and instructions. So if you have a product that either is lacking in warnings, sometimes you get a product that’s manufactured overseas, and I’ve had cases where the literal translation of the warnings that get stuck on the product are gibberish. They make virtually no sense. And you, you know, that’s not the norm, but you could have cases like that or you go through and just see if the warnings were adequate for the purpose of the product.

So what they have with product defect or product liability law is called strict product liability which means that if the plaintiff is comparatively at fault which happens in other types of cases if they’re partially at fault it does not reduce their compensation. The way that they cannot get compensation is if they what’s called misusing the product. And even there’s exceptions to that.

As long as it’s a foreseeable misuse, it still fits within the product liability law. So if somebody is using a tire to um you know with four tires to drive with their car and they overinflate the tire and it bursts, the defendant would come in and say, “Oh, you misused the product cuz you overinflated it.”. We would say, “No, that’s a foreseeable misuse.”. Now, if the person took the tire off the car and went white water rafting with it and it burst, then the defendant would say, “That’s not the purpose of our tire and that’s a misuse.”. So, that’s where it kind of falls into play that you can have the product liability, the issues, and then the defendant will say it’s a misuse. But there’s no comparative fault when somebody’s using the product for its intended purpose or even foreseeable misuses.

So what can happen in a product liability case is we might evaluate the case and the product is manufactured fine. The product was designed fine but the warnings are inadequate. The warnings on it were not good enough to either instruct the person how to use it, instruct with some of the dangers with regard to the use of it or did not include some of the hazards that might be associated with it if they use it in a certain way. So, we’ll have experts that evaluate the warnings and there’s all kinds of standards that go along and sometimes you’ll see a triangle and sometimes you’ll see an exclamation point and sometimes you’ll see a lightning bolt and sometimes it’ll be red and sometimes it’ll be yellow. And the reason why is because there’s standards that go along with these warnings and the size of the font and whether it should be all caps or all bold. There’s a lot that goes into it. So if something does not have adequate, proper or sufficient warnings, that in and of itself can be a dangerous product.

When we’re pursuing a product liability case, basically what we’re doing is we’re establishing that the product did not function as the consumer would have expected it to function. It did not function as it’s intended to function. And that’s essentially what we’re doing. And sometimes what we’ll do depending upon the type of case, we may design an alternative design. And we will certainly show how it malfunctioned and show how it it should have functioned.

When we have a product liability case at Fulginiti Law, these are cases that are fairly heavily involved with experts, different types of engineers, different types of human factors experts, and we typically try to get an expert that’s been really involved with the type of product that it is. There’s types of engineers who who do like a whole bunch of stuff and then there’s certain types of engineers who specialize in in the very type of product that it is because normally when we have a product liability case, we’re up against a company that does nothing but that product. Their engineers do nothing but that product. So, we make sure we have experts who are specialized in the very type of product that we’re going to be addressing and criticizing.

When we at Fulginiti Law have these defective product claims, what we need to do, as with many type of cases, is preserve the product. And we’ll go through, depending on what the product is, we’ll go through steps. So, if the product is one that we want to take apart, before we take it apart, we’ll have it x-rayed and we’ll have it uh evaluated so that we can see what it looks like inside without opening it yet. Then, we’ll take it to a lab and we’ll have it opened professionally, videotape, photograph, make sure everyone is present so there cannot be a claim that we did something wrong. While that is going on, we may take samples of it, depending upon what it is, and have it analyzed because maybe it’s supposed to be 80% iron or something. And when we have it analyzed, it turns out it’s weaker and it only had 60% iron and it had some aluminum and it wasn’t supposed to have aluminum or whatever it might be.

So, when there’s a a product defect case, we analyze the product aggressively. We will also obtain competitors products and and other products to see what the differences are with competitors products. And there are times when we have provided alternative designs to make them safer and better and smarter products.

One of the good things about product liability law is industry standards are irrelevant. The theory is that an industry can be negligent. An entire industry might be making a product wrong. If you think about it, football helmets, what the what the industry used to use. Leather football helmets was completely improper for football players and that’s what the industry used. And over time, and I believe in part because of litigation, football helmets became better, became safer. An entire industry can be negligent. So industry standards are not admissible in a product liability case to show that you complied with industry standards.

With all cases, there’s a time limit that you can bring a case. So, we at Fulginiti Law try to jump on cases as quickly as possible. Product liability cases have of a 2-year time limit to bring those cases. So, from the time that you were hurt from a product until the time that you are barred and no longer able to bring that suit is 2 years. There’s some limited exceptions called the discovery rule and when you learned about something possibly, but really the rule is 2 years. So, we really need to jump on things as quickly as possible.

A lot of workplace accidents and things like that also so that we can try to get the product because sometimes and we’ve certainly had cases that by the time they come to us, the forklift is gone and they’ve moved on and whatever was wrong with it. At the time, we may not be able to investigate or evaluate. There’s the outside time limit of 2 years to bring a lawsuit, but really you need to start moving on these things as quickly as possible so that you can preserve evidence as with every kind of case uh and make sure that you are able to prove everything you need to prove.

What we see in a lot of these product liability claims is the manufacturer uh will often try to claim it’s a misuse. And what they do is they have a 130 page user manual and they’ll try to pick something out of the manual and say, “Oh, well, wait a minute. You didn’t do this before you used it. Therefore, you misused it.”. Because we say and they have sort of they cover their end in this thing and in the beginning of the manual. It’ll say if you don’t follow these instructions. It’s a misuse of our product but that’s not really the law but that’s what they try to do. They try to say you misused it in whatever way. It is that they’re claiming that you you didn’t follow the policy or the procedure. And that’s why also we address whether or not the manual is even adequate or sufficient for purposes of you know having proper warnings with the case. But misuse is a significant one that they designed it properly, you know, to just defend the product is another common defense of theirs.

One of the things that we see in these cases and it’s more associated with the misuse defense again that the product manufacturers try to use. There is a concept called assumption of the risk. In Pennsylvania though courts have ruled that the assumption of the risk defense which is a defense where the court says you knew about this and you voluntarily encountered it. An assumption of the risk defense doesn’t really apply when people get hurt in the workplace setting because the rationale is do you really do anything voluntarily at work? I mean, you go in, you do your job, if there’s something wrong with the machine, you have to use it. If there’s something wrong with the process, you have to do it. If there’s something wrong with the safety, you have to go forward anyway. So, they’ve sort of eliminated the ability of the defendants to use this assumption of the risk defense. When people are injured in the workplace setting, if it’s a product, it goes more towards whether or not they misused the product.