Product Liability Investigations

Product Liability – How we can help

When failures occur and people are injured, it is important to know why and how the failure occurred. We have the experience in conducting thorough failure analyses and an understanding of the litigation process. A detailed engineering analysis may be required, or exemplar / prototype testing needed, or the review of a design FMEA, or the development of a detailed fault tree. Whatever the need, our experience can assist you.

Irrespective of whether you are a plaintiff or defense attorney, we can help you understand the failure and give you better insight into your case. Contact us today to start working with you to understand why and how a product failed.

Product Liability – Overview

Product liability cases exist because a manufacturer or seller of a product is accused of placing a product into the market place that is defective. Often times, someone is injured as a result of the supposedly defective product. When this happens the injured individual or individuals will retain an attorney and file a civil suit against the manufacturer or seller of the product. To be clear, Clarksean and Associates are not attorneys, nor do we offer legal advice. Seek the advice of a qualified attorney in the event of an accident.

There are three general types of defects for a product. They are

Design defect.
Manufacturing defect.
Marketing defect (failure to warn).

The names are pretty much self explanatory, but for a point of reference, these defects were defined online by the Rottenstein Law Group LLP a few years back.

A design defect is “a problem with the product’s design that makes the product inherently dangerous or useless, even if it is manufactured perfectly and made of the best-quality materials.” For example, a pulley is made and sold under the premise it is good for a 200 lb load, but in reality, when the product was designed someone made an error and the pulley is only good for 100 lbs. The pulley is perfectly manufactured, sold, and used by someone to lift 200 lbs. The product fails, the manufacturer is sued over the injuries, and a thorough failure analysis is undertaken to determine why the pulley failed. Not all situations are that simple though.

Take the case of parts designed for use on a recreational vehicle. The vehicle experiences a number of environments while being driven. There may be bumps the vehicle hits, objects the tires or skis go over, and the way the vehicle is driven can lead to a wide range of load conditions that will be experienced by the vehicle’s parts. These loading conditions need to be assessed and then structural loads need to be defined for system components. If for example, the designer neglected to properly apply the loads, or forgot to consider the life of the vehicle and ignored fatigue loading on the parts, well then parts could start to fail prematurely. This would be considered a design defect.

The impact of an error like this could be small or large. For example, a designer sizes a series of bolts to attach the gas tank to a recreational vehicle. Over time, the vibrations lead to bolt failure(s). A couple bolts break, the gas tank vibrates against the frame, a small hole is formed over time, and eventually enough gas starts to leak that it finds an ignition source – causing a fire under the hood of the recreational vehicle. The outcome could be severe burns for the rider – or – the need to replace the gas tank after they’ve put out the fire. Or, the leakage occurs in a spot where it vaporizes and vents to the outside.

A manufacturing defect can be defined as “a problem that becomes part of the product when it is made. The two most common causes of manufacturing defects are poor-quality materials and carelessness in putting the product together, or shoddy workmanship.” A classic example is the case where a product is designed properly, a specific type of steel is specified, and then when manufactured, the wrong steel is used in the fabrication of the product.

Lastly, a “marketing defect or ‘failure to warn’ is not a problem with the product itself. Instead, a failure to warn is a failure to let customers know to use or not to use the product in certain ways, because these ways of using or not using the product may result in injury.” The use of poor labeling or operating instructions would be an example of a failure to warn scenario.

Whatever the type of defect, that defect leads to a failure which leads to an accident. The accident is where someone is injured. For example, let’s say a grade 5 bolt was mistakenly used during assembly (manufacturing). This is a manufacturing defect that leads to a bolt failure which in turn can lead to the structure coming apart unexpectedly and injuring someone.