Boston Product Liability Lawyers

Helping Clients Throughout New England

When purchasing a product, most customers don’t take into account the potential risks they may face as a result of their purchase. Indeed, most people reasonably expect that any new purchase will have been properly designed and tested before it becomes publicly available. Unfortunately, in far too many circumstances, unsafe products can and do make it onto the market, placing the lives and well-being of consumers in danger.

Unsafe products can cause a wide range of injuries and even death. Because of the serious repercussions that many people in Massachusetts suffer due to unsafe products, our team at Crowe & Harris, LLP believes that the producers of these products should be held liable for the consequences faced by consumers. Fortunately, many people who are harmed by unsafe products can hold the manufacturer or distributor responsible and get much-needed compensation due to product liability laws. Our Boston product liability lawyers can give you our undivided attention and secure the maximum amount of compensation available to you under the law.

Contact us online or call (617) 404-3417 for a free consultation. We also have decades of experience helping injured clients throughout New England, from New Hampshire to Rhode Island.

Types of Product Liability Claims

Unsafe products have the potential to cause serious harm to consumers in many different situations. Products can typically be found defective in the following three ways:

Manufacturing Defects

As consumers, we assume that there exists an adequate level of safety and proper function of each product we buy. Unfortunately, manufacturing defects sometimes make products unsafe, thus injuring innocent consumers like you or your children. These defects are unacceptable and you have the right to pursue legal action if you believe that a manufacturer was negligent or reckless in creating an unsafe product.

Manufacturing defects are varied and can be caused by a number of factors. Some of the more common causes of such defects include the following:

• Use of improper materials
• Improper assembly
• Failure to understand design
• Failure to train employees
• Manufacturing negligence

The consequences of these accidents typically extend well beyond the more immediate physical and emotional traumas that are sustained in the incident itself.

With that in mind, our Boston legal team can work closely with you to develop a legal strategy to recover compensation for all of the damages you sustained, including the following:

• The costs associated with any rehabilitative or medical care
• Any loss of income or diminished capacity to earn future income
• Restitution for the current and emotional trauma you sustained

Design Defects

Design defects are, many times, the result of negligence of some kind. For instance, a product designer might have done any of the following:

• Not considered age-appropriateness
• Designed with improper materials in mind
• Had unclear manufacturing instructions
• Had incorrect manufacturing instructions

Any of these actions by a product designer could cause a defect in a product.

Marketing Defects

Marketing defects refer to problems with the ways that a product is advertised or labeled. These defects can lead to safety issues for the end user, which can then unfortunately lead to a variety of injuries. There are a number of ways that a product might have a marketing defect, each of which poses a potential danger to everyday consumers.

Some more common examples of marketing defects include the following:

• False promises of safety / safe use
• Falsely labeled ingredients
• Failures to warn about dangers of use

There are three essential conditions of proof that must exist for a marketing defects claim to be valid. Even if one of these conditions is not evident, then a claim may not succeed.

These conditions include:

• Knowledge of seller that product is unsafe at time of marketing
• Failure of seller to notify consumers of danger
• Link established between failure of notification and consumer injury

A product liability attorney in Boston can help you understand whether your case is likely to succeed. If you have any suspicion that a marketing failure resulted in injury to you or a loved one, it is likely worth it to seek experienced legal counsel.

Commonly Defective Products

While there is potential for any product to be unsafe, injuries crop up more commonly in a handful of categories.

Some of the most common unsafe products that result in product liability lawsuits include:

Pharmaceuticals

Millions of people in the United States rely on pharmaceutical products to regulate physical and mental conditions. We depend on these products, sometimes daily, and it’s critical that their manufacturers and distributors are transparent about what these products may do. Unfortunately, legal claims involving unsafe pharmaceuticals remain a problem in Massachusetts and across the country. Victims sometimes suffer severely when manufacturers are not clear about possible side effects or when there has been a mistake in the manufacturing process.

Drug Contamination

When manufacturers sell contaminated drugs, they breach the trust patients have in them to provide a safe product that can help the sick recover. The consequences of this negligence can be deadly. Contaminated drugs can poison patients, many of whom are already vulnerable, and cause further illness or even death.

The FDA maintains strict standards for pharmaceutical products, but when a company fails to meet these standards, even for a moment, lapses in quality can occur. Drug contamination can occur at many different points in the manufacturing process.

Here are a few ways negligent pharmaceutical companies can cause their drugs to become contaminated:

• Improper training: If manufacturers do not properly train new workers, employees can make fatal errors, such as mixing ingredients in the wrong concentrations.
• Direct contact with products: Pharmaceutical products can be incredibly sensitive to substances carried on the bodies or clothing of employees. In some cases, failure to wear gloves and other protective clothing, along with inadequate hygiene standards, can cause employees to contaminate drugs unknowingly.
• Unsanitary equipment: When manufacturers do not properly sanitize their equipment, dangerous substances can linger and make their way into the next batch of products.
• Improper storage: Manufacturers can store ingredients or finished products in unsafe conditions, such as high temperatures or containers with improper air exposure.
• Mistaken labeling: Sometimes, employees can mix what they think are the correct ingredients but are in fact other ingredients that have been mislabeled, resulting in a product with a potentially dangerous composition.

These errors, among countless others, have the potential to contaminate pharmaceutical products with dangerous or even deadly substances. Allowing any of these errors to occur is an act of serious negligence on the part of the pharmaceutical company, and patients pay the price.

Defective Household Appliances

Some of the more prominent dangers associated with defective household appliances include:

• Explosions
• Fires
• Flooding / water damage / mold
• Electrocution
• Child injuries

Each of the above-mentioned dangers has the potential to cause you or a loved one extensive injuries and/or property damage.

Toxic Food Products and Containers

The food industry is constantly under fire for dangerous products resulting in massive recalls. Mislabeled or broken product containers can pose a serious health threat for consumers. Toxic food products and inefficient containers are significant errors that occur more often than one might imagine.

There are a lot of potentially serious oversights that can result in harm to the consumer, but three of the most common include:

• Contaminated Food
• Food-borne Illness
• Mislabeled Food

Any of these issues might cause you to suffer from serious illnesses that are expensive to treat.

Dangerous Childcare Products and Toys

Childcare products and toys must be designed and manufactured with the utmost care, so they do not pose any health risk or other danger to the children for whom they are intended. When a childcare product or toy is built without proper regard to child safety, a child may become injured or even suffer wrongful death after using it.

Common hazards of dangerous childcare products and toys include the following:

• Lead Paint Poisoning
• Age-inappropriate Toys
• Choking Hazard

Each of these risks poses a significant threat to an innocent child handling a dangerous childcare product or toy. Additionally, parents might be left with emotional and financial grief from the experience.

Defective Vehicles

A defective vehicle is dangerous because it is either more likely to be involved in a car accident or more likely to inflict harm to passengers.

More specifically, some of the dangers facing drivers of defective vehicles include the following:

• Roof collapse/crushing accidents
• Lacerations from broken glass
• Head injuries/failure of airbag to deploy
• Neck strain/whiplash
• High-impact and high-speed crashes
• Rollover accidents

Each of the above instances often has devastating consequences.

Discuss Your Unsafe Product Case With Us

At Crowe & Harris, LLP , our Boston product liability attorneys fight to ensure that consumers do not have to pay for the damages they may have suffered from an unsafe product on their own. We can help you understand your options and possibly fight for the justice and compensation you need.

You deserve unwavering advocacy from a firm that has the experience to protect you and your rights. Call our team today at (617) 404-3417 for a free consultation.