Product Liability Lawsuit Information and Case Examples...

These defects can be in:

-design (how the product was engineered);

-manufacture (how the product was made); and/or

-marketing (effectively, that the advertising for the product set unreasonable expectations for the product's effectiveness and safety).

Defective products can include:

-prescription medications with dangerous side effects
-defective medical devices
-faulty automobile parts
-contaminated food or supplements 

Anyone hurt by a defective product can file a product liability lawsuit to recover costs relating to their injuries.

A product is considered defective if it doesn't work as expected and exposes its user to an unexpected danger. 

Many definitions of reasonable consumer expectations come from the Uniform Commercial Code, which extends a set of guidelines on interstate commerce. As long as the product is used in its intended fashion, and it still results in harm to the user, the product may be considered defective.

Some products are dangerous by design: knives, explosives, chemicals, chainsaws, etc. In this case a product liability lawsuit would have to establish that there was insufficient warning about the inherent lack of safety with the product.

If a product is unavoidably unsafe the user is still responsible to act in a reasonable way when using it. 

If the user did act reasonably and the product still malfunctioned in some way causing them to be injured, they may have grounds for a product liability lawsuit.

So if you burn your hand on a stove, you probably don't have a case because it's reasonable to expect a stove to be hot. Also, putting your hand on the stove is an unreasonable use of the product. 

But if the stove was advertised as "cool touch" and you got burned anyway, you may have a case that the stove was defective.

Read the following case examples to better understand how a product liability lawsuit works: