Getting new stuff always feels nice. You know it: that feeling you get when a package you’ve waited weeks for arrives or when you drive home with a box you’ve been saving up for next to you in the passenger’s seat just can’t be beat.
Maybe it’s a new computer, a new HVAC unit, an electric range, or maybe a washing machine. The point is getting something new always brings this feeling of excitement and buyer satisfaction.
But buyer satisfaction can quickly turn into buyer’s remorse when you find your new piece of tech doesn’t work. It’s even worse if the faulty product leads to harm and injury to members of your household.
You’ll have lost your brand-new item and the money you spent on the item, and now, you’ll have to spend even more money to repair any damage the defective product has caused to you, those around you, and your property.
Warranties might reimburse you for the value of the purchase itself, but what about everything else? Well, for that, you might need to hold the manufacturer responsible and acquire the services of a defective product lawyer.
What Services Does a Fulton County Defective Product Attorney Provide?
Defective product attorneys specialize in pursuing damage claims against companies and manufacturers whose faulty products harm customers. As personal injury lawyers, defective product attorneys can do the following for your case:
- Legal Consultation: Not every case can be approached the same way; not every case needs an expert lawyer’s services. That’s why good lawyers will offer free consultations to help clients become aware of any options available to them. Your lawyer can take a look at your situation and give an initial assessment of what your claim is worth and how to best pursue it… all at no cost to you.
- Investigation: While the insurance company sends an adjuster to investigate and evaluate your claim, your lawyer can spearhead an investigation of their own on your behalf. Expert defective product lawyers know what evidence to look for and how to use it to the best extent, ensuring that when you meet the insurance representative, you do so on a level field.
- Negotiating a Settlement: Most insurance adjusters will make disappointingly low first offers, and they will often sound convincing when they justify their proposal. Your legal representative will know better and will demand a fair offer that will cover all of your losses.
- Pursuing a Lawsuit: In the event negotiations fall through, your lawyer can escalate to a lawsuit. While the odds of making it to court are low, this threat will often ignite a fire under the other party, making them more amicable to an offer you think is fair. And if you do reach court, your lawyer will represent you there as well.
How Do I Make the Most of My Defective Product Case?
Whether you opt to file your claim with the help of a lawyer or not, there are a number of things you can do to help your defective product case. The rule to follow here is that information is the biggest factor.
In general, your odds of getting a successful claim will depend on the amount and quality of information you have that supports your case. In short, it’s all about what evidence you have and how you use it.
Do Not Dispose of the Product
When an insurance adjuster arrives to begin their investigation, they will want to see the damage themselves to determine that the product was indeed destroyed by a fault or malfunction rather than user error. This means the defective product itself is the first piece of evidence you can present to an insurance adjuster to support your side of the story.
Of course, this advice is contextual. Some defective products might fail so catastrophically that they have to be disposed of, so use common sense when determining whether to keep them around.
For example, defective chemical products may need to be disposed of because they remain a threat to everyone in the household. For safety reasons, you could keep the container instead of the entire package.
On the other hand, faulty electrical appliances might have caused injury when they were first turned on, but as long as they are unplugged, they should be safe to store in the garage. Note, however, that appliances should have any capacitors discharged before storing to prevent electric shock.
Document the Damage
Once you have discovered that the product is defective, you will want to document the damage to the item itself, as well as to people and property involved in the malfunction accident. Take photos, videos, audio recordings describing the damage, and even journal entries.
This kind of thorough documentation is useful, especially if you have no choice but to dispose of the defective object. Your lawyer can use any documentation you have performed to speed up building an airtight case, and the adjuster will be able to account for all damages to factor into their offer.
Keep Your Receipts and Records
Personal injury claims are ideally meant to compensate victims for the entire value of their losses. This, of course, implies you need to be able to prove the value of your losses to the insurance company.
In line with this, some evidence is easy to gather. Medical records and fire investigation reports provide objective assessments of physical and material losses, respectively, and are easily available for both the victim and the insurer to get a copy of.
That said, plenty of other evidence is not as readily accessible – either to your insurer or your lawyer – and requires some responsibility on your end to maintain. These kinds of evidence include personal copies of receipts and prescriptions.
Receipts and prescriptions are typically not intended to be permanent records of expenses. The former is only temporary proof that a purchase occurred, and the latter is a written instruction for a pharmacist to follow.
As a result, receipts are printed on paper with ink that fades over time, and prescriptions are often thrown away after they are filled. And yet, the information you can get from these slips of paper provides direct quotations of how much you spent on products and services for your recovery.
Keep your receipts with you, and include them as references when working with a lawyer to build your case. You’ll be glad you did.
Act Quickly
The time-sensitive nature of some forms of evidence is one reason to act quickly. Georgia’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims is another.
Georgia’s civil statute of limitations varies with the nature of the complaint. For personal injury, the state only allows you to take action within two years of the injury.
Two years seems like a lot of time, but that isn’t the case when you factor in how long it takes to put a case together, plus recovery time, follow-up appointments with a physician, and the odds of your claim being denied and forcing you to start from scratch.
Granted, there is some leeway in the form of the discovery rule. That is, statutes can be temporarily halted – or “tolled” – until the plaintiff discovers or has had reasonable time to discover their injury.
This means that statutes start running as soon as an injured party is aware of the harm they sustained rather than the moment the injury occurs. So, for instance, if caustic fumes cause damage that is only detected months after the accident, only then does the clock start ticking.
But again, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have two years to file a case regardless of when the injury was discovered. The law may allow that, but for the most part, it gets harder to build stronger cases as more time passes.
Work With a Defective Product Attorney
According to a survey last updated in April of 2023, there is a notable increase in the odds of getting compensation for losses when working with a personal injury lawyer compared to working without. As many as 91% of respondents who chose to hire an attorney got a payout compared to only 51% of respondents who chose to represent themselves.
The same survey also found that legal representation vastly increases the amount of compensation claimants receive. Respondents who chose to work on their own had an average settlement value of $17,600 compared to a $77,600 average settlement for those with lawyers.
For context, the median product liability case settles for $50,000.
What’s more, even after deducting the average contingency fee across respondents, those who opted for legal representation found they made claims worth three to four times the value of those who chose to work alone.
Work With a Fulton County Defective Product Law Firm
Every product has a risk of defects, no matter how stringent quality control is. Be it medical devices, chemicals, drugs, car parts, household appliances, or even toys for kids, nothing is truly 100% safe.
Manufacturers ask customers for a lot when they want our trust in their products. When safety measures fail, and that trust leads to injury, the road to recovery might not be accessible or cheap.
Get the help of the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm and get the compensation you need to put a faulty product accident behind you. We have recovered millions of dollars for our clients and stand prepared to do the same for you.
At the CEO Lawyer, attorney Ali Awad leads his team of professional personal injury lawyers to fight for the rights of their clientele in Fulton County and across Georgia. They are one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country and serve in both English and Spanish.
Contact the CEO Lawyer today at (470) 323-8779. We offer zero-cost, zero-obligation consultations and will not charge you until after we win your defective product case.
