Los Angeles Product Liability Attorneys

These are the three main types of defective product cases:

• Design defect: Occurs when a product is produced according to design specifications but doesn’t meet a consumer’s expectations for safety, or the risks of harm are greater than the benefits.
• Manufacturing defect: Occurs when the manufactured product does not match safe design specifications.
• Inadequate warning defects: Occurs when the manufacturer failed to provide clear instructions for safe product use and failed to adequately warn about hidden dangers.

Consumers interact with products every day, so safety is a critical issue. California product defect laws recognize this fact. While in some cases an injured party must prove negligence, any entities in the chain of creation, distribution, and marketing are strictly liable when their defective products cause injuries.

Types of Product Defects

Here are a few of the most common product defect categories:

• Vehicle injuries: Defective autos, trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, and other vehicles can cause brain trauma, spinal cord injuries, severe burns, and other catastrophic injuries. The NHTSA reports that auto and truck defects contribute to accidents, but they don’t track the numbers, except for high-profile defect cases such as those involving Takata airbags.
• Consumer product injuries: The Consumer Product Safety Commission tracks all reported consumer product defect complaints. These product-related injury lists include toys, appliances, electronic devices, recreation equipment, nursery furnishings, detergent packs, playground fixtures, blinds, curtains, and many others.
• Scaffolding injuries: Scaffolding contributes to thousands of construction fall injuries each year. Metal units are a factor in construction and window washer electrical contact injuries as well. Scaffolding incidents cause falls from significant heights, so they often result in catastrophic injuries, including spinal cord trauma, traumatic brain injuries, and death. Scaffold-related electrical injuries often cause severe burns and fatalities.
• Manufacturing equipment injuries: Despite decades of safety campaigns, annual OSHA statistics regularly document catastrophic manufacturing injuries. Power presses, meat cutters, saws, and other machines common to manufacturing and meat processing operations can crush and amputate limbs.
• Drug and medical device injuries: Drugs and devices produce a wide variety of expected and unexpected side effects and fatalities. Liability is often contingent on whether or not a patient received adequate warnings.

At Greene Broillet & Wheeler, LLP, our attorneys are currently accepting the following product liability cases:

Investigating a Product Defect Case

As with all complex cases, product defect investigations require intense focus, diligence, and attention to detail. Our in-house investigator and outside labs and experts have provided the support we needed to uncover evidence and maintain our professional investigative standards.

Here are some of the key elements in a product liability case:

• Product retrieval: The defective product is the key evidence in a product defect case. Our investigator has proven effective at retrieving products for expert non-destructive testing. We have stored defective products in a designated evidence warehouse. When appropriate, our facility also accommodates judges, juries, and defense counsel for demonstrations that show how defective products injured our clients.
• Witness statements: Witnesses often provide information to corroborate our clients’ version of events. Witnesses are often aware of details our clients missed because of their injuries. We’ve relied on our investigators to obtain statements promptly, before witnesses relocate or forgot what they saw.
• Site investigation: Our investigator has taken photographs, created diagrams, and documented the details used to create courtroom exhibits. They’ve completed incident site investigations at residential, commercial, and construction sites, public transportation venues, street intersections, and other incident sites.
• Machine/equipment maintenance records: When industrial machines cause employee injuries, our investigator has photographed the equipment and reviewed its maintenance and repair logs.
• Formal reports: Our investigator has obtained fire reports, police accident reports, and other formal records. These documents sometimes pinpoint a defective product as the initiating cause.
• Government data and reports: Government agencies such as OSHA, CDC, NHSTA, and CPSC compile injury and causation statistics. CPSC also documents individual consumer complaints. OSHA investigates serious work-related injuries. Its employer citations and investigative reports document equipment defects and related workplace safety injuries. Our investigators have researched appropriate government data sources for relevant information. Where applicable or necessary, they have obtained OSHA investigative reports under the Freedom of Information Act.

Case Study: Investigating Toyota Vehicle Defects

In 2010, defects were causing several Toyota vehicle models to suddenly accelerate on their own. Toyota recalled about eight-million vehicles for repairs, but not before at least 89 died in crashes and 57 suffered injuries.

Greene Broillet & Wheeler, LLP participated in litigation that ultimately resulted in a $1.2 billion settlement, and the NHTSA levied a record $17.35 million fine against the company.

Our firm partner Christine Spagnoli also recovered $4.9 billion from General Motors for a defective fuel system that burned four children and two adults—one of the largest product liability verdicts in American judicial history.

Millions Recovered in Past Product Liability Cases

At Greene Broillet & Wheeler, LLP, we believe that manufacturers and others involved in the manufacture and sale of a product should pay for the damages their defective products cause. Product defect cases are complex, and proving that a specific defect caused a specific injury can pose extraordinary difficulties. Our Los Angeles product liability attorneys, however, understand the legal and medical issues and the evidence required to prove a product defect case.

Through hard work and determination, our firm has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and judgments in complex product defect cases. While our past results don’t guarantee future outcomes, we are proud to share some of our recent case successes.

Some past successes in product liability law:

• $7.8 million settlement: A defectively designed and manufactured floating rock grinding machine amputated a worker’s leg.
• $5.5 million settlement: A morphine pump malfunctioned, causing brain damage when it pumped its entire contents into the plaintiff.
• $4.9 million binding arbitration: A plaintiff was injured on a Ferris wheel at Kingdom Amusement Park.
• $4.1 million verdict: A defective playground swing caused a 12-year-old child’s head injury. The court awarded damages against a San Diego School.
• $3.4 million settlement: A plaintiff couple sustained serious injuries while jumping onto a moving trolley. The case settled after our firm filed a suit for damages due to a design defect that forced riders to jump through trolley cars.

Click here to view more product liability case results.

Why Other Law Firms Refer Cases to Us

Product defect cases require a keen ability to analyze an injury and prove a causal connection to a defective product.

Manufacturers often have prior knowledge of design, manufacturing, and warning defects, and even when they do, there’s often a time delay between this initial awareness and public notification about the problem.

When a manufacturer doesn’t acknowledge a defect, it may prove difficult, at first, to make this defect apparent to the court. That’s just one of the challenges of handling a complex product defect case—but one at which Greene Broillet & Wheeler, LLP has proved adept.

In other words, our legal and investigative teams have done what was necessary to prove defects and implement winning strategies for our injured clients:

• We have a track record of multi-million-dollar settlements.
• Our skilled in-house investigator has uncovered evidence, witnesses, and retrieved critical information.
• Our litigators have resolved cases in the courtroom when negotiation proved ineffective.
• We’ve won complex product defect cases in the courtroom against corporate defendants and their insurance companies, including against large auto manufacturers.
• Our successes with product defects, catastrophic injuries, truck accidents, and other serious cases affirm our standing as a trusted California law firm.
• We represent plaintiffs only. Our focus on severely injured people and their families allows us to direct our time, energy, and resources toward resolving the most catastrophic injury cases.