Product Liability

Machinery that injured an operator doing what operators do. A vehicle system that failed, or that turned a survivable event into a fatal one. A consumer product that ignited, collapsed or released. A device that failed inside someone.

The defendant is a chain rather than a company: the manufacturer, the maker of the component that actually failed, whoever assembled the finished product, the distributor, the seller, and sometimes an entity abroad whose reachability is a question of its own.

A design defect says the product was dangerous as intended, so every unit that left the line carried it. That claim generally has to be met with an alternative design that was feasible, available and safer — engineering work rather than argument.

A manufacturing defect says this unit departed from its own specification. It is the narrowest theory and the most winnable, provided the item and the specification both survive.

A warning defect says a known danger was inadequately communicated. It looks like the easiest of the three and is frequently the hardest, because a warning that existed will be held up as sufficient and the argument becomes what an ordinary user would have done differently.

The most consequential thing in these cases usually happens before anyone is retained. The machine goes back into service, the vehicle is released to salvage, the device is discarded by the hospital, the appliance is thrown out during a cleanup. Preserving the item in the condition it was in is not a step in the case. It is the case.

Where it survives, destructive testing has to run under a protocol agreed in advance with every party. Testing it once destroys the ability to test it again, and doing that unilaterally invites a spoliation argument that will outlive whatever the testing found.

The rest of the record is external and usually obtainable: recall and complaint databases, service bulletins, warranty and field-failure data, the manufacturer's own testing, and prior similar incidents. Prior similar incidents are what turn a defect into a known defect.

Product cases get referred out for a reason unrelated to competence. They demand engineering expenditure before anyone knows what the case is worth, and that spend does not come back if the theory fails.

The most useful moment to refer one is immediately — before the product is released, before the scene is cleared, and before an insurer has taken possession of the thing the case depends on.