Product liability refers to the obligation of every party along the manufacturing chain for the damages caused by a product, including the manufacturer, the wholesaler, suppliers, and even the retail store owner.
However, for a product to be considered defective, it must have an unexpected danger or defect that does not meet the consumer’s ordinary expectations. As a result, when you file a product liability claim, you are filing the claim against a manufacturer, designer, or retailer because the product was somehow defective and injured you.
Consequently, these claims tend to fall into the following three categories:
Manufacturing Defects
A manufacturing defect is an unintended defect in a product. Rather, it involves a properly designed product, but an assembly error caused it to depart from its intended design and become dangerous.
Design Defects
Design defects occur when a defect is inherent in the product’s design, or rather when there is an error in the original blueprint of the product that makes it unreasonably dangerous for a potential user. However, because these defects refer to a flaw in how the product is designed, these defects will generally affect the entire product line instead of just one specific item.
Marketing Defects
These defects often occur when a product or good has inadequate instructions regarding the proper use of the product or improper warnings that do not protect consumers from injuries when using the product or warn them of latent dangers in the product.