Product Liability
Defective and dangerous products
Product liability is the type of law that holds manufacturers and those that make products available to the public responsible for injuries and deaths that defective products cause. Very often, a product will cost so much money to bring to the market, a manufacturer may act as if settling some lawsuits is cheaper and acceptable rather then recalling and fixing their defective and dangerous product.
An experienced and effective trial lawyer can help. Product liability cases are difficult and are related to personal injury law and trial law.
Dangerous and defective products effect all ages from "Toys That Kill," to automotive recalls, medication and prescription medication, child car booster seats or even infant cribs. The consequences of the recalls are most often extreme. In one randomly picked "consequence," item off the long list of recalled child car booster seats the consequence is: "OCCUPANTS OF THE SAFETY SEAT WOULD FACE AN INCREASED RISK OF INJURY IN THE EVENT OF A VEHICLE ACCIDENT." - and this, "occupant," is in other words a child occupying the safety seat. Still, cars are much safer now than they were in the 1950's. Sites like safercars.gov are helpful places to look for consumer product information especially when shopping for something as important as a car child seat.
The recent Johnson & Johnson DePuy hip implant recall is another instance where the company knew for several years of the problems with the implants, but only recently recalled the DePuy implant.
More than two years after the Food and Drug Administration began receiving complaints about the failure of a hip replacement implant made by the DePuy Orthopaedics unit of Johnson & Johnson, the company said Thursday that it was recalling two kinds of hip implants. DePuy said that it had made the decision to withdraw the products because many patients required a second hip replacement after the company’s implants had failed. [...] In one New York Times article, some orthopedic experts expressed dismay that DePuy had not halted sales of the devices earlier. About 12 to 13 percent of patients needed a second hip replacement within five years of receiving an ASR implant [...]
8/26/2010 New York Times: Johnson & Johnson Recalls Hip Implants
By NATASHA SINGER
While some may have to have further surgery and may suffer reduced mobility, further pain and suffering. DePuy and Johnson & Johnson acted as if this is acceptable. In fact, there are two separate hip implant devices that are being recalled, one of which was never approved by the FDA. Further, patients may not only need a second hip surgery and still suffer reduced mobility, skin necrosis and even high levels of cobalt and chromium ions in the blood.
Unlike new drugs, many of which go through a series of clinical trials before receiving approval from the Food and Drug Administration, critical implants can be sold without such testing if a device, like an artificial hip, resembles an implant already approved and used on patients [...] But many patients soon developed inexplicable pain, and surgeons, when replacing the implant, discovered mysterious masses of dead tissue near the thighs of some patients [...] And tests of those patients showed that they had elevated levels of cobalt and chromium ions, the A.S.R.’s constituent metals, in their blood, a sign of edge-loading. [New York Times December 16, 2010 "The Implants Loophole" By BARRY MEIER]
You need an experienced trial lawyer to help hold these corporations accountable.
In fact, the American Association of Justice is an organization of trial lawyers who recognized the need for lawyers to right the imbalance, and there history even intersects here in Portland, Oregon:
On August 16, 1946, a group of nine plaintiffs’ attorneys involved in workers’ compensations litigation met in a hotel room at the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Their goal was to put together a plan for a national organization to combat new threats facing trial lawyers across the country. It was at this meeting where it was enthusiastically agreed upon to create a new association by the name, the National Association of Claimants' Compensation Attorneys (NACCA). Their devotion to securing strong representation for victims of industrial accidents soon attracted admiralty, railroad, and personal injury lawyers. It wasn't long before the group included attorneys engaged in almost all facets of trial advocacy.
[...] As the world's largest trial bar, AAJ promotes justice and fairness for injured persons, safeguards victims' rights—particularly the right to trial by jury—and strengthens the civil justice system through education and disclosure of information critical to public health and safety.
Stories of defective and dangerous products and the corporate egregious behavior are all too familiar.
Toyota's Recent Safety Recall - Denial and only recall after too many people had experienced dangerous incidents, and unfortunately, some families lost loved ones.
Toyota has agreed to pay $10 million to settle legal claims from the family of a California state trooper and three relatives whose fatal car wreck helped spark the automaker's wide-ranging safety recall, lawyers said on Thursday. The family's lawsuit, filed in March in San Diego Superior Court, was part of a wave of product-liability and wrongful-death actions brought against Toyota Motor Corp and subsidiaries over complaints of sudden, unintended acceleration in its vehicles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating reports that as many as 89 crash deaths since 2000 may be linked to sudden, unintended acceleration in Toyotas and the company's luxury-line Lexus vehicles.
[12/23/2010 Reuters News]
The 2009-2010 Toyota recalls displayed to all that a corporation will stop at little before they do the right thing. Toyota denied any problems, and rather then open up honestly to the public about the potential electronic or mechanical problems, many were initially lead to believe that their car's stuck accelerator experience was simply due to a floor mat. Perhaps for some, but not for many.
Three separate but related recalls of automobiles by Toyota Motor Corporation occurred at the end of 2009 and start of 2010. Toyota initiated the recalls, the first two with the assistance of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), after reports that several vehicles experienced unintended acceleration. The first recall, on November 2, 2009, was to correct a possible incursion of an incorrect or out-of-place front driver's side floor mat into the foot pedal well, which can cause pedal entrapment. The second recall, on January 21, 2010, was begun after some crashes were shown not to have been caused by floor mat incursion. This latter defect was identified as a possible mechanical sticking of the accelerator pedal causing unintended acceleration, referred to as Sticking Accelerator Pedal by Toyota. The original action was initiated by Toyota in their Defect Information Report, dated October 5, 2009, amended January 27, 2010. Following the floor mat and accelerator pedal recalls, Toyota also issued a separate recall for hybrid anti-lock brake software in February 2010. [wikipedia]
In December 2010, Toyota agreed to pay 32.4 million in Federal fines to the US Government. These are civil fines as punishment to Toyota for the way they handled this defective product recalls.
The latest settlement, on top of a $16.4 million fine Toyota paid earlier in a related investigation, brings the total penalties levied on the company to $48.8 million. It caps a difficult year for the world’s No. 1 automaker, which recalled more than 11 million vehicles globally since the fall of 2009 as it scrambled to protect its reputation for safety and reliability.
[In April] At the time, Toyota denied attempting to hide a safety defect and said it agreed to the penalty to avoid a lengthy legal battle with the government. [...] Toyota told NHTSA the steering defect was also found in several U.S. models and recalled nearly 1 million vehicles. NHTSA said in May 2010 it learned about complaints from U.S. consumers that Toyota failed to disclose to the government when it conducted the recall in Japan in 2004. [The OregonLive / AP]
Unfortunately Toyota recalls are not unusual. The Ford Van rollover cases are very recent as well, again, a situation where a corporation decided a few casualties and deaths were acceptable losses.
"The woman was paralyzed in 2002 when her Ford Explorer rolled over and its roof gave way. Ford argued that punitive damages were unconstitutional because the vehicle design met safety standards." The plaintiff argued Ford knew the van was prone to rollovers. Ford argued in its defense that the vans meet Federal safety standards.
Penalty stands in Ford rollover case; The Supreme Court rejects an appeal of an $83-million verdict.
Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles, Calif. Author: David G. Savage, Dec 1, 2009, Start Page: B.6, Section: Business; Part B; Business Desk
Abstract - Purchase LA Times Article
The 2000 Firestone tire recall was one of the deadliest recalls in US history. Experts estimate potentially 250 deaths and more then 3000 serious injuries as a result of this defective product. Investigations and information to the public were delayed while Firestone denied the problem.
It is only with the work of trial lawyers that corporations are held accountable for knowingly and continuing to sell defective and dangerous products. Ralph Nader's Center for Auto Safety is famous for the Ford Pinto cases in the early 1970's.
According to a 1977 Mother Jones article, Ford allegedly was aware of the design flaw, refused to pay for a redesign and decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. The magazine obtained a cost-benefit analysis that said Ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 repair against the monetary value of a human life — what became known as the Ford Pinto Memo. [wikipedia]
Dangerous and defective products are not the exclusive domain of the auto industry and auto accidents. Too often we hear of dangerous infant cribs being recalled, dangerous chemicals in children's toys, even in our pet food we've seen recently a deadly recall of pet food which was tainted with a cheap chemical to boost the protein in pet food but which resulted in kidney and liver shut down in many people's beloved pets.
