Atlanta Defective Product Lawyer

At one time or another, most of us have experienced frustration after buying a product and finding out it doesn’t work right. But unfortunately, sometimes, this situation can go from an annoyance to causing serious harm or injuries. If you’ve been hurt or a loved one has died as the result of a defective product, you may have a lot of questions. How can you seek damages to cover the cost of your recovery? Is the manufacturer at fault? Have others been hurt by this same product?

If you find yourself wondering how to move forward after being injured by a defective product, don’t hesitate to contact an Atlanta defective product lawyer. You need someone with the experience to answer questions about your particular case and recommend options for you to recover compensation. 

Followed by millions on social media, attorney Ali Awad works diligently to bring legal power to the people, and he knows the best strategies to achieve good results. If you’ve been harmed by a defective product, you need the help of an experienced legal mind to aggressively pursue your claim. With the CEO Lawyer in your corner, you can go toe-to-toe with big companies.

If a defective product has impacted your life, call the CEO Lawyer today for a free consultation, and let the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm take the worries off your shoulders. You can get back to focusing on your recovery while we deal with insurance companies and other parties. The CEO lawyer and his team of injury and accident attorneys in Atlanta work on a contingency basis, which means you have nothing to lose by calling (833) 254-2923 to discuss the details of your situation. 

Types of Defective Product Claims

There are several different categories of categories of defective products. The following definitions should help you understand the difference:

• Manufacturing defects. Usually, this means something went wrong when manufacturing your particular product, and the rest of the product line is unaffected. For example, you might buy a toaster oven and set it up in your kitchen. Unbeknownst to you, there’s a short in one of the wires, and one day this leads to a kitchen fire. The fire spreads quickly, and you suffer serious burns. In this case, the manufacturing defect may have led to your injuries. Another common situation is when drugs are recalled because some sort of contaminant was found in one or more batches. This tends to affect more than one individual consumer, but it is not an inherent flaw in the design of the drug itself. Instead, it’s due to an error in the manufacturing process.
• Design defects. These tend to affect all the products in a line due to an inherent problem with how the product was designed in the first place. If you’ve ever had to send a product back to the manufacturer due to a product recall, this may have been the reason. For example, if the whole line of toaster ovens was prone to catching fire due to a design flaw that allows overheating, that would be an example of a design defect.
• Failure to warn. You may have seen some warning labels on products that seem obvious and unnecessary. Sometimes manufacturers may go overboard trying to warn consumers of potential dangers, but on the other hand, some products fail to carry necessary warnings. Most failure to warn claims are based on the idea that the manufacturer failed to warn the consumer about a danger that was not obvious to the user or that necessitated special care. For example, if you buy cold medicine and the manufacturer’s packaging doesn’t warn you that it might interfere with your blood pressure medication, they may have failed to warn you of a potentially severe interaction.

What Do You Need to Do to Prove Product Liability in Court?

Georgia product liability law is based on “strict liability.” This means that if a defective product harms someone, the manufacturer is liable even if they did not act negligently. In other words, manufacturers are expected to understand that they’re responsible if their products hurt someone.

What this means is that in order to sue for product liability, all the plaintiff has to do is demonstrate the following:

• The defendant did manufacture the product at issue.
• The product was defective when it left the manufacturer’s control. In other words, the end-user or someone else in the supply chain didn’t break the product then claim it was defective.
• The product’s defects caused the plaintiff’s injuries.

Usually, there isn’t too much argument over who manufactured a product, although sometimes a manufacturer outsources production to a third-party company. Any company that puts its name on a product can be liable for injuries it causes, no matter who made it, but this may reveal additional defendants. 

However, it is more common for the manufacturer to argue that the product was fine when it left the factory, and someone must have tampered with it later to cause the defect. Or they may claim the plaintiff’s injuries were pre-existing and not caused by the defective product at all. Your defective product attorney will discuss with you strategies for overcoming these arguments in court.

What If the Manufacturer or Other Party Really Was Negligent?

Although it is not necessary to sue for product liability, you can also sue a company for negligence. Sellers and retailers can be sued as well as manufacturers, but often the “duty of care” for retailers is much more limited. It’s also important to understand that the burden of proof for negligence claims is higher than for simple product liability claims. In order to prove negligence, your attorney will need to provide the court with some evidence that the manufacturer, seller, or other party knew, or should have known, that the product was defective. 

One recent example of a negligence claim is the current litigation against Purdue Pharma and other pharmaceutical companies regarding the nation’s opioid crisis. The main claims in litigation against Purdue Pharma are that they knew about the addictive nature of the drug, they downplayed the risks, and they encouraged healthcare providers to prescribe it through aggressive marketing campaigns.

However, not every product liability case is as large as the opioid crisis lawsuits, and many lack enough evidence to prove negligence. If your attorney doesn’t believe you have enough evidence to be successful with a product negligence claim, they may recommend you file a strict liability claim instead.

What About Other Defendants?

Strict liability doesn’t just apply to manufacturers. Under this law, sellers, retailers, and distributors may also be sued. For example, if the manufacturer provides some evidence that the product wasn’t defective when it left the factory, your attorney may suggest taking your claim to the retailer. It’s possible the product was stored incorrectly, causing it to break down and malfunction. For example, some products have requirements about what temperature they can be stored at. If the store kept the product in a storage area that was too hot or cold, that could be the reason it began malfunctioning. Even if the manufacturer was at fault, you might still be able to sue the store that sold the product. Whether this is a worthwhile pursuit is a question to discuss with your attorney.

Proving Your Claim

If possible, try to save the defective product that you believe caused your injury. This is not possible in every situation, of course, but sometimes people dispose of evidence that could be useful to them. For example, your impulse may be to toss out the burned hulk of the toaster oven that set your kitchen on fire, but keeping it could be helpful if you decide to make a claim against the manufacturer.

Your defective product attorney may also suggest you make a list of witnesses who were there when the injury happened, if there were any. This may be helpful if the manufacturer or other defendant in the case claims that the product was fine, and you simply misused it or ignored the manufacturer’s instructions. You may also need your medical records to show when your injuries occurred and that they were not pre-existing conditions.

What If You Didn’t Own the Defective Product?

It doesn’t matter who purchased or owned the product. If you were injured by a defective product, even if you just borrowed it from a friend, you can still file a lawsuit against the manufacturer, retailer, wholesaler, or other parties.

How Do You Know If A Product Was Defective?

Sometimes people have no idea they were harmed by a defective product. They may think an accident was just that – an accident – or they may blame themselves for doing something wrong. Some injured parties may start to wonder if they realize that the product didn’t work as expected. It’s not uncommon for people to start searching online or asking in product forums if anyone else had a similar problem with a product. In some cases, this is how consumers become aware of an issue with a product line.

However, talking to other product users is only helpful in situations of design defects or failure to warn. This strategy is unlikely to shed any light on the situation if your particular product just happened to have been made incorrectly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have a claim.

If you believe you or a loved one have been the victim of a defective product, the best strategy is to contact a defective product attorney in Atlanta who offers free consultations. They will ask you some questions about the product, your injuries, and the incident that led to these injuries. Additionally, they will probably ask if you still have the product. Then they may do additional research to determine what industry standards are, if competitors do things differently from the manufacturer of your product, or if there were any safety warnings that should have been included but weren’t. If your attorney believes you have a claim, they will advise you on your options moving forward. CEO Lawyer  Personal Injury Law Firm will work on a contingency basis, meaning that we take the cases we believe have the best chances of success. We don’t charge the client anything until (or unless) they are able to recover compensation for their injury losses. Contact us online or call (833) 254-2923 to speak with an attorney today.