If you’ve been injured by a product, it can be difficult to know whether you have a claim against the manufacturer that the product was defective. This is especially difficult when you’re facing the medical bills that come along with the injury.
In a search for how it all happened, it may become clear that the company who designed the product did not give proper warnings to prevent the injury.
Here are the things courts often look for when deciding if a manufacturer provided proper warnings.
Insufficient instructions for use
The instructions that come with a new product serve two functions. They are to help you understand how to use the product and how to use it safely. While these two things tend to go together, that is now always the case.
Imagine a saw, for example, that gives instructions for use, but doesn’t describe how to use the safety features. In this case, although the instructions for the saw explained how to use it, they failed to describe how to avoid some of the inherent dangers that can come with using it.
Failure to warn of hidden dangers
For some things, the dangers are obvious. Knives are sharp, the stove is hot and electricity can be dangerous. In other cases, the danger may not be so obvious. This is when the manufacturer has the responsibility to warn you of problems that could happen that are not as obvious.
An example would be a wireless computer mouse that overheats if it has been in use for too long. When you buy a computer mouse, you expect to be able to use it as a normal part of the day. If the mouse overheats after a few hours of being used, that would be a hidden danger and the manufacturer has an obligation to warn you so that you don’t burn your hand.
Injuries are still happening
With the myriad of warnings and labels that flow from product boxes, there appears to be an effort on the part of many manufacturers to warn their customers. This effort, does not, however release them from liability when there was a clear failure to warn or there are insufficient instructions included with the product.