What product defects create liability?

On Behalf of | Nov 30, 2020 | Product Liability |

Georgia residents like you expect the products you buy to be safe to use. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Sometimes, products are defective and those defects can create health hazards.

What sort of defects may you run into? How do they impact the overall safety of your products?

Three types of product defects

Cornell Law School examines the three categories of product defects. The first type are design defects. This is a flaw in the design of the product itself. In other words, production can happen flawlessly but the product still poses a danger.

The second type are manufacturing flaws. You see a lot of this in the modern consumer market. Examples include defective tires or airbags in cars. With manufacturing defects, only a few batches of a product have the harmful flaw. This still often results in mass recalls, though. Unless people can trace the flaw back to an exact batch, all items using the potentially defective part are dangerous.

Unique risks of marketing flaws

The third type are marketing flaws. This involves the packaging of a product. The product itself is safe when used as intended. But something about the packaging makes it hard to use in that way. As an example, consider heat styling tools without a label that lets you know what parts heat up. You can grab the wrong place and burn yourself. Another common example involves medications with improper dosage information on the box.

Each type of flaw creates its own unique problems. But the end result is physical, mental or emotional harm done to consumers like you.