Skip to main content Where Can I Find Help for My Product Liability Cases in Big Pine Key, Florida?
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Product Liability Cases in Big Pine Key, FL
You expect that the products you own will work the way they are supposed to.
The brakes on your car should slow the vehicle down. Your toaster should warm bread without burning it. The child gate you installed should prevent a curious two-year-old from tumbling down the stairs.
The last thing you expect is for those products to fail due to a design flaw. But when they do, they can cause significant harm to you and your family. When this happens to your Big Pine Key family, you need help.
If you ask yourself, “Where can I find help for my product liability cases in Big Pine Key, FL?” there is one answer better than the rest. Morgan & Morgan can provide the help you need. Just use our convenient contact form today for a free case evaluation.
Product Liability Basics
Just because your blender goes on the fritz and sprays fruit smoothie all over your favorite shirt, that doesn’t mean you have a product liability case. You only have a product liability case if two important factors are present: liability by the manufacturer and serious harm to an individual properly using the product. If you are wondering, “Where can I find help for my product liability cases in Big Pine Key, FL?” to determine whether these factors are present, a product liability lawyer can provide the answers you need.
Manufacturer Liability
A manufacturer is only liable if the product has a defect that makes it inherently unsafe. Nearly all products have some defects, but most of those defects don’t affect the safety of the product. For example, if you purchased a book, and the pages are incorrectly numbered, that doesn’t present a safety hazard to you.
A defect for which a manufacturer can be liable can either be a design defect or a manufacturing defect. The former means that the design of the product inherently creates unsafe conditions when the product is used as instructed. Alternatively, when a product has a manufacturing defect, the design may be safe, but a mistake in the manufacturing process makes the product unsafe to use.
Finally, the manufacturer must have been either negligent or reckless. If the manufacturer was aware of the defect and continued to release the product, they were recklessly putting customers at risk. If the manufacturer was unaware of the defect due to negligence in safety testing, they are liable despite their lack of awareness of the danger.
Significant Harm
As much as you loved that shirt, the permanent raspberry stain on it doesn’t qualify you for a product liability case. That harm isn’t significant enough for a product liability case. The types of harm that qualify include:
- Second or third-degree burns
- Dismemberment
- Loss of life
- Major property destruction (car, house, etc.)
- Head injuries, especially those resulting in brain damage
- Loss of sight or hearing
- Broken bones
- Paralysis
This is far from a comprehensive list. But the general idea is that you or a loved one must have suffered harm that has a significant impact on your life. Just because the defective brakes in your car could have resulted in a major injury, if you safely coasted to a stop without harm, you aren’t eligible for a product liability claim.
Get answers to commonly asked questions about our legal services and learn how we may assist you with your case.
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How You Can Prove a Product Liability Case
The main piece of evidence that you need to provide to prove your product liability case is your set of medical records. After you have been significantly harmed due to a defective product, a doctor will treat you and test you. The records of those visits and the conclusions made by the doctor are critical evidence in a product liability case.
A product liability lawyer will instruct you about which records are most important and will help you get additional records that may assist your case. Product liability lawyers in Big Pine Key, Florida, know which local doctors can best evaluate, test, and treat specific types of injuries.
Property Damage
Some product liability cases are more about property damage than injuries. For example, if defective wiring in your air conditioner resulted in your house burning down, your injuries might have been relatively minor, but the harm was still lasting. You lost every possession, and recovering could take years.
In a case like this, you need to provide records of what was lost and what hardship you are facing due to the loss. If, for example, this prevents you from working, you could be eligible for compensation for loss of wages and maybe even for loss of future wages due to missed opportunities in your field.
Defective Products
The good news about proving that a product was defective is that you likely won’t have to do any work to prove it. Proving that a product has a defect is the kind of work that requires an expert. Your product liability lawyer can hire experts in their field to examine the design, manufacturing, and distribution process.
Your lawyer might also be able to prove a defect was present by examining other product liability lawsuits. This is the kind of information that an attorney has easy access to. Just give the facts of your specific case to your attorney and let them do all of the hard work of proving your case.
Can I Only Sue Manufacturers?
No. You can potentially sue anyone involved in the design, manufacture, distribution, or sale of a product, depending on where the liability resides.
For example, if the company that designed the product isn’t the same company that manufactured it, then only one might be liable. Similarly, if a dangerous defect was being introduced due to the distribution process, then you could sue the distributor. The seller of a product may also have liability if they were aware that the product they were selling was dangerous and continued to sell it without warning customers.
Where Can I Find Help for My Product Liability Cases in Big Pine Key, FL?
The first place you seek help with a product liability case is a product liability law firm that practices in Big Pine Key. Morgan & Morgan is one of those law firms with decades of experience in the field.
Additionally, the federal government also provides some useful resources. The best of these is www.recalls.gov, which can let you know whether the product that harmed you has been subject to a national recall. If it has, then you probably have a strong case for a product liability claim.
Will I Need to Go to Court?
Whether you will need to go to court or not will depend on the response of the company you file a lawsuit against. If the company admits to its liability and makes a fair settlement offer, you can quickly get paid without ever setting foot in court.
However, most companies do not want to admit liability in a case because it makes them vulnerable to other lawsuits. You may receive a settlement offer without an admission of guilt. If you consider the compensation fair and don’t care about the admission of guilt, you can again avoid a trial.
If you insist that the company acknowledge its guilt or be found guilty, though, a trial is inevitable. Once a trial begins, you should expect that any result will take years, or possibly decades, to materialize.
How Much Does a Product Liability Lawsuit Cost?
At Morgan & Morgan, we can’t speak for other law firms, but we can say that we only take product liability cases on contingency. This means that you only pay for our legal services if we win you money. Since you only pay if you get paid, your product liability lawsuit is effectively free.
Should I Join a Class-Action Lawsuit?
That is always a difficult question to answer. When you are involved in a class-action lawsuit, you have limited control over the compensation you will receive. Additionally, that compensation is going to usually be significantly lower than what you could receive in an individual lawsuit. However, participating in a class-action lawsuit requires significantly less effort on your part.
As a rule of thumb, if you have been significantly harmed and have the evidence to prove it, you are probably better off filing an individual product liability lawsuit. If your harm was relatively minor, a class action lawsuit may be preferable. Either way, you shouldn’t make the decision alone. Speak with a knowledgeable product liability lawyer in Big Pine Key, Florida.
What Is the First Thing I Should Do if I Am Injured by a Defective Product?
The first thing you should do is get medical attention immediately. Besides the fact that any product liability case will require medical records as evidence, your health is just too important to avoid getting medical attention. Injuries from defective products can have lifelong consequences if you don’t get immediate medical attention. Please get treatment before speaking with a lawyer.
Do I Have a Product Liability Case if I Wasn’t the Person Using the Defective Product?
In some circumstances, you do have a case. For example, if defective scaffolding fell on you and injured you, you could sue the manufacturer, even if you weren’t using the equipment. All that matters is that the scaffolding was being used properly and that you were seriously harmed by the defect in the product. The manufacturer is responsible for the harm caused by that defect, even if the person using the product wasn’t the person who was harmed by the product.
Where Can I Find Help for My Product Liability Cases in Big Pine Key, FL?
If you have been seriously injured by a defective product, you need help. You may need help getting medical treatment and paying medical bills. You may need help with lost wages and eventually returning to work. You may need help recovering property that you lost.
All of that help costs money that should be provided by the manufacturer, distributor, or seller of that product. But where can you find the help you need?
You never again have to ask yourself, “Where can I find help for my product liability cases in Big Pine Key, FL?” Just use our contact form today to schedule a free case evaluation.
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