Individuals who are injured by faulty appliances have more legal options for pursuing compensation than they may realize. Assessing the applicability of the appliance warranty may be a useful start, but product liability law also offers avenues for New Hampshire residents to receive compensation for injuries caused by defective products. Discussing your situation with a personal injury attorney experienced in handling faulty appliance injury cases may help you to determine your next steps. Schedule a consultation with a Meredith lawyer at Friedman & Bresaw, PLLC by calling 603-707-4800 today.
Understanding Products Liability
Claims for compensation for injuries caused by faulty appliances fall within the purview of products liability law. As Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII) explains, most products liability claims are personal injury cases brought under civil torts law, with a notable exception being defective product cases brought for breach of warranty.
Civil Torts: The Legal Basis for Personal Injury Cases
A tort is essentially a “wrong” – or, as LII describes it, an “act or omission” that leads to someone other than the person who committed the tort (the tortfeasor) experiencing injury or harm, with “injury” referring to infringement of the person’s legal rights and “harm” meaning a loss or hardship (such as the physical wounds that, in contexts other than torts law, are typically called “injuries”).
Categories of Torts
There are three main types of torts, each of which imposes distinct obligations on the plaintiff seeking to prove their case:
- Intentional torts
- Negligence
- Strict liability
The vast majority of personal injury lawsuits are founded on the legal theory of negligence, with intentional torts – in which the party accused of wrongdoing is alleged to have acted, or declined to act, with the conscious purpose of precipitating harm – accounting for relatively few cases. Strict liability is only accepted as a viable basis for legal action in certain types of cases. Importantly, however, defective products cases are among the very few scenarios in which the principle of strict liability may sometimes be applied.
Applicability of Strict Liability in Defective Products Cases
Members of the general public often have much less familiarity with the legal principle of strict liability than with negligence, owing to the comparative infrequency with which most people encounter the former. If you want to gain a more robust understanding of when and how strict liability may apply in a case arising from a faulty appliance injury, you may benefit from speaking with a personal injury attorney at Friedman & Bresaw, PLLC to discuss the particulars of your situation.
What Does Strict Liability Mean in a Defective Product Case?
Before assuming that a legal theory based on strict liability is appropriate for your faulty appliance injury case, you may wish to consult with an attorney regarding the details of the defective appliance itself. Under N.H. RSA § 507-D:2, how long you have had the appliance can make a difference in whether you are able to pursue a claim, as can the length of time since the injury. If the faulty appliance was under warranty at the time of the incident that caused the injury, you may also wish to review the terms of the warranty with an attorney to evaluate whether a case for breach of warranty, rather than a personal injury claim, makes more sense in your particular circumstances.
Implications for Trying a Faulty Appliance Case
If applicable, strict liability in a defective product case may mean that the plaintiff does not need to prove in court that the defendant acted negligently, much less with deliberate intent to cause harm. Speaking in broad terms, if a claim for compensation for injuries caused by a faulty appliance is brought on the basis of strict liability, the plaintiff will typically need to prove:
- The product was defective: What kind of proof may be needed or available can vary widely, both by the type of appliance and the type of defect. For obvious reasons, however, establishing that the product was indeed defective will be crucial to this type of case.
- The product was being used as intended, and under normal operating conditions: RSA § 507-D:3 prohibits plaintiffs from recovering compensation in products liability cases in which the product’s original design has been altered or modified, or in which the product’s routine maintenance has been neglected. This element is often subject to some nuance, but many people find it helpful to start by thinking of disqualifying alterations or modifications as similar to the kinds of changes that would void a typical warranty, while “routine maintenance” might include the manufacturer’s recommendations for regular cleanings, resets, and so on.
- The product’s defect caused the plaintiff’s harms: Simply proving that the product was defective when properly used does not necessarily prove that the product’s defect or defects did any damage. To prevail in court, the plaintiff in a product liability case will typically need to establish a causal relationship between the product defect and the damages they suffered. Again, the type of evidence appropriate for proving this point can vary, depending on how the sequence of events unfolded in a particular case.
Implications for Settlements
Every case is unique, but as a general rule, when a company’s legal team believes that an individual injured by a faulty appliance has a strong basis for a defective product case founded on the premise of strict liability, should the injured party choose to pursue remedy through the civil courts, then the company may be more likely to invest in a fair offer of compensation as settlement. Because the elements of strict liability tend to be somewhat easier for plaintiffs to prove than those required in negligence cases, the motivation to avoid the risk of losing in court and receiving an even costlier verdict can sometimes prompt companies to increase their settlement offers more readily than in some other types of civil torts cases.
Common Types of Product Defects
The range of product defects that could potentially pose a danger to consumers is necessarily wide. Some of the most product defect categories most commonly applicable in faulty appliance cases include:
Design Defects
A design defect may not lead to a product liability claim if the only harm caused by the design flaw is failure of the product itself (in other words, when the flawed design simply causes the product to stop working, but does not cause injury). Design defects that lead to product failure but do not cause other problems may sometimes be addressed through warranty claims instead. When a flaw in the way an appliance is designed causes that product to pose hazards to consumers during normal use, however, individuals who have suffered damages as a result of the design defect may be eligible to pursue financial compensation under a product liability claim.
Whether a faulty appliance case based on a design defect ends by settlement or a court order, part of the manufacturer’s responsibility in the final arrangements will often be to recall the dangerous products, in addition to whatever financial compensation the company pays to affected parties. In this way, design defect claims can help to improve consumer safety by ensuring that faulty appliances are removed from the general marketplace.
Failure To Warn Defects
Sometimes there is no way for a product to perform its intended function without presenting some degree of risk to the user. A knife that presented no risk of accidental cutting might be safe to use, but there would be very little reason to use it, since without a sharp cutting edge it could not do its job. Some knives do indeed come with warning labels, but appropriate warnings can be even more important with home appliances, as – unlike a knife – they do not always carry their specific hazards in plain view.
Kitchen ovens, clothes dyers, and many other household appliances all have components necessary to their essential functions, but rarely seen by consumers, that can be dangerous to the unwary. Often these risks can be mitigated by a simple warning label – for instance, on a coffee maker that gets hot during operation in an area users might not immediately expect; in this case the warning label helps to prevent accidental burns by alerting the user that some methods of handling the appliance may be unsafe. The absence of a warning label when one is needed is called a “failure to warn” defect, and may apply even when the product’s design is appropriate to its function and the device itself functions as intended.
Manufacturing Defects
There are also cases in which a product’s design is generally safe and requires no special warning under normal operating conditions – but a mistake during the manufacturing process causes an item to present an unexpected hazard. Faulty appliance wiring can be a key example of this particular problem – and a highly dangerous one.
Unlike design or failure to warn defects, which can generally be expected to affect all units that follow the same model or template, a manufacturing defect may affect only a single unit, or may on the other hand impact a subset of items produced on an assembly line. Often a company paying compensation in a case based on a manufacturing defect will include pledges aimed at improving quality control in the production process as part of the final arrangement, whether that arrangement is ordered by a court or reached through negotiation with the claimant.
Speak With a Defective Product Lawyer
If you are in the Laconia area of New Hampshire and you are trying to determine your path forward after being injured by a faulty appliance, a conversation with an experienced personal injury lawyer may help you to gain an understanding of your legal options based on the particulars of your case. Consider reaching out to the Belknap County personal injury team at Friedman & Bresaw, PLLC. Call 603-707-4800 to book your free case evaluation.
