There are multiple defects a product can be exposed to. The two most prominent are design defects or manufacturing defects. Manufacturing defects are also commonly referred to as product defects.
An infamous design defect that you see examples of in the technology industry involves batteries. Imagine purchasing a brand new phone, and after a week of use, the phone’s battery starts heating up when charging. A few days later, the battery erupts. Consider what could happen if you were using the phone while the battery erupted.
This is precisely the type of design defect that would be introduced in a product liability case. The case would be presented by accusing the manufacturer of deliberately designing a product that could inflict danger or injury to the buyer. In this specific scenario, the manufacturer purposefully designed the phone where it was unable to support the size of the battery, resulting in this defect.
A defect that happens during production is also a possibility. This happens somewhere along the line of the manufacturing process. When a product has a defect that creates dangerous conditions within the product itself, it is likely the result of a mishandled quality assurance check. Quality assurance exists to eliminate any potentially flawed merchandise before it ever reaches the consumer. However, production defects are not limited to quality assurance.