Defective Product Injury? Suing Manufacturers in Northwest Houston

Suing Manufacturers in Northwest Houston? Texas Product Liability Law is Much More Than Negligence

From your child’s car seat to the medical device used on your parent in a Tomball hospital. We all trust that the manufacturers of these products have used reasonable care to provide us with safe products.

But when a defective product—a product that has a manufacturing defect or a design defect, or a dangerous condition for which there was no adequate warning—results in a serious injury in Northwest Houston, suing a large corporation who’s at fault can be a very intimidating thought.

Fortunately, Texas Product Liability Law is very favorable to injured consumers. In fact, as mentioned above, Texas law provides a legal shortcut that allows you to hold a manufacturer strictly liable for your injuries—often without having to prove that they were careless or negligent.

The Convenience of Strict Liability in Texas

In most personal injury claims (such as in a car accident), the Plaintiff is required to prove that the Defendant acted negligently, or in other words, failed to exercise reasonable care.

Texas, however, imposes a Strict Liability standard of liability for the majority of product liability cases.

Strict Liability does not require injured victims to prove that the defendant was at fault, careless, or did not act reasonably. Instead, under the “Strict Liability” standard, the Plaintiff only has to show that the product was defective and that the defect caused the injury.Simply put, Strict Liability is a legal shortcut for holding manufacturers, distributors, and retailers financially responsible for injuries that their products caused.This makes it a lot easier to sue large corporations who would otherwise hide behind their extensive internal policies and procedures.

The Three Kinds of Product Defects

Per Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, Chapter 82, most product liability claims involve one of three types of defects:

Manufacturing Defect

The product deviated from its intended design and as a result became dangerous to use—even though the product was designed to be safe.

In many manufacturing defect cases, the problem only affects one or a few products of the same line produced by the manufacturer.

The defective condition was present at the time the product left the factory, not as a result of how it was used or by the Plaintiff.

Example: 

The new car tire that unexpectedly blows out because a production malfunction created a weak spot in the rubber.

Design Defect

The whole product line is unreasonably dangerous—even though the products are manufactured exactly the way the manufacturer intended.

Example: 

The breast implant is found to have a high risk of rupture, even when used as directed.

Failure to Warn (Marketing Defect)

There was no adequate warning of foreseeable and non-obvious dangers involved in using the product. In other words, the manufacturer should have provided clearer or additional instructions or warnings.

Example: 

A consumer takes a medication that has a risk of rare but serious interactions with another drug, but the warning on the bottle or patient instructions doesn’t mention or clearly explain this risk.

Examples of Claims You Have to Prove

Manufacturing Defect

What You Prove: 

The specific product was defective when it left the factory and the defect was the producing cause of your injury.

Design Defect

What You Prove: 

A safer alternative design existed that would have prevented or significantly reduced the risk of injury without substantially impairing the product’s usefulness, and this alternative was economically and technologically feasible.

Marketing Defect (Failure to Warn)

What You Prove: 

The manufacturer failed to provide proper warnings, and that failure was the producing cause of your injury.

Who Can Be Sued? 

The Chain of Distribution

In a Texas product liability suit, there is not just one party you can sue, but several:

Manufacturer: 

The designer, formulator, or assembler of the product itself (and usually the main target for the lawsuit).

Distributor/Wholesaler: 

The middleman company that moved the product.

Retailer/Seller: 

The store, outlet, or website that sold the product to the consumer (although Texas law gives more protection to sellers who are not also manufacturers of the product unless they modified it or made a false representation).

The Deadlines and Steps to Know

Deadlines

Statute of Limitations: 

You generally have two years from the date of the injury (or the date you reasonably discovered the injury) to file a lawsuit in Texas.

Statute of Repose: 

You may be time-barred from suing if the product is more than 15 years old (regardless of when the injury happened).

The most important piece of evidence: 

The actual defective product itself. Do not throw it out, try to fix it, or return it to the manufacturer. You need to preserve the product as it is in its damaged condition for examination and analysis by an expert.If you or a loved one has been the victim of a catastrophic injury in Northwest Houston or Harris County due to a defective product, you need an attorney that knows how strict liability works and how to pay for the expert investigations that will be needed to hold the manufacturer responsible. Contact The Law Office of Shaw Clifford today for a free and confidential consultation.

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