Manufactured products of all shapes and sizes reach millions of consumers. As a result, even a tiny defect could cause millions of injuries. As a result, simple negligence is not a high enough standard to protect people.
So, manufacturers are strictly liable for the injuries their dangerous products cause. Victim/plaintiffs need only establish cause. This basic principle applies in all three types of defective product claims.
Design
Although it happened more than fifty years ago, the Ford Pinto is still one of the best examples of a design defect.
Faced with intense competition from small, cheap cars, Ford engineers set out to create their own small, cheap car. To save weight and money, designers placed the gas tank behind the rear axle. As a result, the tank was prone to rupture and explosion, even in low-speed crashes.
After they ran the numbers, Ford executives decided it would be too expensive to make the car safe. So, they did nothing, and people died.
Manufacturing
When they first appeared on the market, Takata airbags were one of the safest products in the world. Airbags save lives, provided the chemical propellant rapidly inflates the bag, but does not cause an explosion.
In the early 1990s, Takata began filling its airbags with ammonium nitrate. This unstable chemical, which is the same compound Tim McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City truck bomb, killed several people and seriously injured many others.
Marketing
A crisis with the magnitude of the opioid epidemic has a number of causes. Defective marketing is one of them.
In the late twentieth century, the Food and Drug Administration changed its rules and allowed prescription drug makers to market their wares directly to the public. Purdue Pharma and other manufacturers quickly took advantage of this change. They marketed powerful painkillers to low socioeconomic groups who were likely to become addicted. Once again, the results were tragic.
Other causes of the opioid epidemic include the manufacturers who produced ever powerful pills and the transportation companies who shipped drugs and did not ask questions.
Defective product victims are often entitled to substantial compensation. For a free consultation with an experienced personal injury attorney in Columbia, contact the Jeffcoat Firm. We do not charge upfront legal fees in these cases.
