Product Liability Basics

27 Mar Product Liability Basics

The reason product liability law exists is to make certain that consumers have some way of getting compensated when a manufacturer irresponsibly releases a product onto the market that ends up causing someone harm. Harm can mean the destruction of your property, damage to your body, long-term effects on your health and many other things. Product liability lawyers in Texas represent people who have been injured because of the negligence of a company, and that quite often means that they end up going up against some very large corporations.

Unsafe Drugs

Unsafe drugs are some of the most common targets of product liability claims. Well-known drugs such as Paxil, Accutane, Vioxx, Chantix and others have all been the subjects of lawsuits over the years. Sometimes these drugs are released on the market despite the fact that testing has shown them to pose a very real threat to consumers. In these cases, the company sometimes acts based on the fact that they'll end up making more money off of the unsafe drug than they will lose to lawsuits and, despite the risks to consumers, they keep producing the drug.

Other unsafe drugs will be given a black box warning. A black box warning means that the FDA has determined that the drug poses a very real risk to consumers, even to the point of constituting a very significant risk of death. The idea behind using this warning is to make certain that consumers are aware of the risks of the drug. Unfortunately, some very unsafe drugs are actually the best ways to treat certain conditions, so the drugs continue to be in use, despite the fact that they pose real risks to life and limb.

Most of the time, a consumer will have to establish that they were not adequately informed of the risks posed to their life by the drug if they want to file a successful lawsuit against the drug company. If the consumer was made aware of the risks posed by the drug and they chose to take it anyway, it's difficult to argue that the drug company was responsible for any damages that the consumer suffered. If the consumer was not informed, however, and taking the drug ended up causing them significant harm, then there is a chance that a lawyer can successfully argue for that consumer in court and that they could win the consumer compensation for their pain and suffering and injuries.