Rochester, NY Product Liability Lawyer

Representing Victims of Dangerous Products Throughout Western New York

At King Law, we have been helping the wrongfully injured secure fair settlements for their injuries for years. Some of the most common personal injury cases involving just one person that we have seen are those regarding defective products, or product liability claims. We believe it is simply unreasonable to allow manufacturers and large companies get off the hook after one of the items they produced injured an innocent consumer.

Inadequate safety standards and manufacturing protocols can make even the most benign products turn into a dangerous tool. No matter how random or surprising your injury might be, if some sort of end product was involved, you might have a product liability case on your hands. If your injury required hospitalization or physician care, be sure to hang onto copies of any medical records, as these may be powerful pieces of evidence to use for your claim.

Consumer products are recalled much more often than they should be due to safety defects, and those recalls frequently occur after one or more consumers sustain serious or fatal injuries. Since many product recalls do not happen until companies receive multiple reports of injury, that means it is certainly possible that you could suffer a severe injury due to a product defect before there are any warning signs about the product’s risks. Yet how can you know with certainty if you have a defective product claim?

It can be difficult to know whether or not you have a valid lawsuit until you have spoken with an experienced Rochester personal injury attorney who can assess the specific facts of your case. In the meantime, we want to provide you with some additional information that can help you to have a better sense of your potential product liability case.

Merely Owning a Defective Product Cannot Give Rise to a Claim

Just because you own a defective product does not mean that you will be able to file a claim against the designer, manufacturer, or marketer of the product. To be sure, in order to be eligible to file a claim, products liability requires that you suffered an injury as a result of using the product. As such, if you receive a recall notice for a product or you learn that a product you own and use regularly has been recalled, the mere fact that you own or use the product is not enough to file a lawsuit. This is true even if the product has been recalled because it has caused serious or fatal injuries.

It is important to remember, even if you do not have a claim, that you should stop using a dangerous product that has been recalled and that you should follow all instructions in the recall. Just because a recalled product has not yet caused an injury does not mean that it cannot cause an injury in the future.

Your Injury Must Have Occurred While Using the Product in the Way it Was Designed to Be Used or in a Foreseeable Manner

In order to have a valid product liability lawsuit, you must have suffered an injury (as we discussed above). In addition, that injury must have occurred while you were using the product either in the way it was designed to be used or in a way that was foreseeable. Generally speaking, designers, manufacturers, and marketers of products will not be liable for injuries that occur when a consumer is using a product in a way that was never intended to be used and that was not foreseeable to the product maker.

For every defective product, there might be a dozen different ways it could ultimately hurt you or your family. Do not rule out your injury as being an invalid claim simply because it seems uncommon or not severe enough. Manufacturers need to be held accountable for the harm their products cause. By filing a claim against them, you will not only help secure your financial stability but you will also help protect others in the future from suffering the same injury.