A. While product liability claims often involve negligence, product liability is a distinct legal claim in the United States. It stands for the principle that if companies are profiting from consumers, they must ensure they’re producing safe items fit for their intended uses.
Four main types of product liability claims exist in Texas:
Strict Liability - Most product liability cases involve strict liability. This puts manufacturers, designers, and/or sellers on the hook for injuries caused by defective products even if they exercised extreme care during product development.
Negligence - Product liability based on negligence alleges that the product designer or manufacturer carelessly produced and sold the product, such as sourced substandard materials or incorrectly manufactured parts.
Breach of Warranty - These claims alleged that the product didn’t perform as marketed and wasn’t fit for its intended use. For example, treadmills that overheat during workouts or prescription medications that don’t treat illnesses as marketed. Common breach of warranty claims include marketing dangerous products to the wrong age group, such as toys for infants with small pieces and strangulation hazards.
Failure to Warn - Even products without any defects can still cause injuries when manufacturers don’t provide proper use instructions or fail to warn about potentially dangerous side effects, ingredients, or uses.
Importantly, injured claimants might hold the product designer, parts manufactures, wholesalers, and commercial retailers responsible for defective products. Attorneys call this the chain of liability, and it’s not necessary to prove actual knowledge of the defect in many cases. In this regard, product liability cases differ from general negligence litigation. Texas does provide certain protections to general retailers, like the Leon Valley Walmart, if the retailer did not know about the danger and did not develop or alter the product.