Defective Product Injury Claims

Types of Product Defects

Product liability claims generally fall into three categories. A manufacturing defect occurs when a product departs from its intended design during the manufacturing process — for example, a batch of products with a component that wasn't properly assembled, even though the design itself was safe.

A design defect exists when the product's design itself is inherently unsafe, even if manufactured exactly as intended. Courts often evaluate design defect claims by asking whether a safer alternative design was feasible and economically practical at the time the product was made.

The third category, failure to warn (sometimes called a marketing defect), involves a product that is unreasonably dangerous without adequate instructions or warnings about non-obvious risks. Even a well-designed and properly manufactured product can give rise to liability if it lacks warnings about hazards that aren't obvious to an ordinary user.

Who Can Be Held Liable?

Product liability law often allows injured consumers to pursue claims against multiple parties in the chain of distribution, including the product manufacturer, component part manufacturers, the company that assembled the final product, distributors and wholesalers, and the retailer that sold the product.

Many states apply 'strict liability' to certain product defect claims, meaning an injured person doesn't necessarily need to prove the manufacturer was negligent — only that the product was defective and unreasonably dangerous, and that this defect caused the injury while the product was being used as intended (or in a reasonably foreseeable way).

The Role of Product Recalls

A product recall occurs when a manufacturer or government agency determines that a product poses a safety risk and should be removed from the market, repaired, or replaced. While a recall can be important evidence that a product was defective, it is not always required to bring a successful claim — many viable claims involve products that were never formally recalled.

Conversely, simply because a product was later recalled doesn't automatically mean every injury related to that product resulted from the recalled defect — establishing causation between the specific defect and your injury remains an essential part of any claim.