San Antonio Product Liability Lawyer

Have You Been Injured By a Defective or Faulty Product? Discuss Your Injury Case With Our San Antonio Product Liability Lawyer

Have you been the victim of a defective product that went wrong? Did you know that you can have a case against them for product liability, targeting the maker of this product?

If you have been injured in such a case, contact San Antonio product liability lawyer Michael Grossman and Grossman Law Offices so that you may be able to claim full compensation for a product failure that has resulted in your injury. By bringing our proven legal advice, you'll be able to navigate the often difficult maze of laws and jurisprudence regarding product liability and personal injury cases in Texas. Allow our 20 years of experience working these kinds of litigation to go to work on your case. We will now explain how the law on defective products, product liability and personal injuries works when you file a personal injury and defective products case against a manufacturer in a San Antonio court.

Federal Product Safety Standards and Product Liability

Federal law says that all producers must take steps to ensure that their products are safe for people who use them. Companies that make defective products or defective items that harm people can be held responsible for injuries caused by their products. In these cases, the victim can then request compensation from the defendant company through a lawsuit. Based on the circumstances of your particular accident, product liability claims are based on negligence or strict liability.

Product Liability For Defective Products

Negligence occurs when the maker of the product does not meet the required federal safety standards and rolls out a faulty or defective product on the market. If the producer has not been able to do something about product safety issues that were foreseeable and it is feasible for it to be detected under normal circumstances, yet they do nothing before releasing the product to the public and it causes injury, the company may be responsible for the damages incurred by injured victims. Therefore, the injured party may claim compensation in a San Antonio product defect civil suit.

Negligence may be considered if the manufacturer has used low quality materials or dangerous techniques to create a product that causes serious bodily injury. Another example of negligence can be established if a user is not sufficiently aware of the risks and negative impacts of the product. For example, if you choose to use particular drugs and experience acute headaches, but this symptom is not observed in the bottle as a possible side effect of this drug, you may be able to hold the manufacturer responsible for your pain.

Product and Strict Liability

Strict liability suits do not prove that the manufacturer was negligent. The manufacturer may have met all federal safety standards, using acceptable quality materials and documented processes for the manufacture of the product. It may have offered enough information to users on the risks associated with their product’s use. However, the product itself could be what is dangerous. In short, a manufacturer did everything correctly in the manufacture and marketing of the product, but the product is unsafe for general public use. A hypothetical example of strict liability for defective products would be selling something like a toddler toy that looks and smells like food which encourages them to put it in their mouths, likely creating a choking hazard.

In Court

Although it may be readily apparent that the manufacturer of a defective product caused your injury, we have to make a full, evidence-based case that can be proven in court. We must establish four primary steps, which constitute a legal product liability: duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages.

Manufacturers should do everything possible so that their product is safe for the general public. It’s their responsibility to use all information and research to manufacture a safe product. When they do not, they have not fulfilled their legal duty to provide for public safety. It is a manufacturer’s duty to follow reasonable rules of conduct that prevents exposure to potential risks to people.

The next part is a violation of a duty of care when they are not responsible at the level of reasonableness, which can cause others to suffer damage. Neglect of that duty, for example, is when that standard has not been met. Breach of duty occurs when a product manufacturer’s negligence results in injury to a person. In other words, the manufacturer has not lived up to a reasonable standard of care of their consumers. Proving breach of duty in Texas product liability lawsuits can be challenging due to the technical aspects often involved in showing how a product might have caused a victim to suffer injury. However, experienced product defect attorneys in San Antonio, TX can assist you with such an endeavor.

Next, you must prove that the defective product caused the injury. Causation is required to prove that the defendant's negligence was what, after all is accounted for, caused your injury, resulting in your financial losses. If you have no proof that the defendant caused the injury in your case, you will not sway a jury. The connection must be drawn between breach and damages.

Finally, to win in court you have to prove up your damages. This means more than just asserting your damages. And damages means that money that the defendants would be sentenced to pay. You must prove that the damages you claim is a real assertion of fact. This requires a careful and deliberate effort to calculate the total amount of your incurred financial losses due to your injury in order to determine a fair and equitable sum. The evidence needed by the judge and jury is a persuasive argument to support the claim for damages. Placing a dollar amount on damages is usually not an easy task for the layman. It is often difficult even for lesser-experienced lawyers with less experienced. If you do not have evidence and persuasive arguments to support your claim of damages, you will likely not receive fair compensation.

Damages Available In a Product Liability Claim

The expected value of a Texas product liability lawsuit is ultimately based on the amount of damages suffered. Legally, the "damages" means that the amount requested as compensation for the economic losses incurred by the victim, i.e. plaintiff. The Lone Star State recognizes two different damages types in a case like yours: general damages and special damages.

General damages are damages that are intangible and normally have no direct value associated with them. General damages are more subjective than special damages. They are different from case to case in how they are figured up. General damages include such things as:

• Disfigurement
• Mental stress and anguish
• Pain and suffering
• Loss of Consortium
• Loss of reputation
• Physical disabilities

As an example of the subjectivity of general damages, imagine that an accident occurred due to a catastrophic failure of a water heater with a defective part. In this accident, there were two victims that were badly burned by hot liquid and the force of the explosion. The first party was injured, but was unconscious from the time of the incident through their recovery. The second person suffered similar burns, but never lost consciousness and faced incredible pain throughout their whole treatment and recovery. Although these two victims likely incurred the same medical and therapy bills and so on, the second person had more severe pain and suffering. Therefore, there are different amounts of damages to be considered.

In addition to general damages are subjective in the sense that every experience that has been damaged many cannot cope as well. General damages can also relate to highly subjective issues such as disfigurement, loss of future earning potential or mental distress. For example, a 19-year-old college student who gets a burn that scars a small part of her face likely suffers more psychologically than a policeman who already has facial scars.

Special damages, in turn, call for economic damages that are often easy to measure. Special damages are:

• Medical bills, past and future
• Property damage
• Legal fees
• Loss of income
• The loss of working capacity

For an example of special damages, imagine a plaintiff who worked as a tour guide at The Alamo making $40,000, but lost his ability to work after an accident caused by a defective exercise machine severs his Achilles tendon. Obviously, he can no longer continue to give tours at The Alamo since he can’t walk without pain or with any good pace, and as such, loses his income over the last 20 years of his career. Therefore, it is enough to start that he should seek $800,000 in compensation for loss of salary plus his other damages.

One characteristic of a good product liability lawyer who is well trained and experienced in these matters is the ability to correctly identify and support all the damages you are claiming in a way that convinces a jury your claims are justified. Our San Antonio product liability attorneys can evaluate each case carefully to maximize the value of compensation that is available.

Death Benefits for Surviving Family

If you are the surviving immediate family member of someone killed by a defective product, you should know that a product liability lawsuit has two main objectives: to ensure that financial compensation is delivered to the family of the decedent and to prevent future cases of negligence by a manufacturer.

The shock caused by the sudden, unexpected death of your loved one is devastating no matter where the blame lies. While nothing can compensate for the emotional loss that you’ve experienced, the financial crisis that is usually caused by the death of a family member can be enormous. Grossman Law Offices in San Antonio has product liability attorneys who have pursued wrongful death claims over the past two decades.

Wrongful Death Damages

The surviving members of the family of someone who died a wrongful death caused by a defective product are eligible for certain types of compensation and reparation. From a legal point of view, the family can pursue two types of damages: damages for wrongful death and survival damages.

In the first, spouse, children, parents and sometimes siblings, are entitled to damages for wrongful death. Wrongful death damages can include:

• Medical expenses of the victim before death.
• The loss of monetary support to the future of the deceased would have provided.
• Compensation for psychological and emotional pain.
• Funeral costs.

Survival damages, in turn, provide compensation for the damages to the family as if the deceased was only injured in an accident and was not dead. Survival damages go to the spouse, children, parents, and, rarely, brothers and sisters. Survival damages can include:

• Hospital and medical expenses.
• Property damage.
• Physical pain and suffering of the victim.
• The loss of income during the hospital the victim would have been if he had survived and recovered.
• All the victims' emotional or mental damage, has been in the rehabilitation process if he or she had only been wounded.
• The loss of earning capacity due to injury in the long term.

Investigation and Collecting the Evidence

In a product liability case, you need to make a case based on evidence, and on an investigation into how the product caused your injuries. We must examine all the evidence so that the guilty can be properly identified and the cause can be shown to the jury. It is important to act quickly to investigate what happened in your product liability case. Ample evidence usually means that the case you bring in stands to be stronger when presented in court or brought to mediation. When one of our lawyers is on your side, we will investigate what happened in order to ascertain the identity of all possible liable parties. We move as quickly as possible and conduct a thorough investigation that will work to establish the product manufacturer’s liability where applicable.

Have You Suffered an Injury Due to a Defective Product in San Antonio, Texas?

If you have been injured as a result a product liability scenario, or if you have questions about a defective product and how it could be involved in your injury, call San Antonio product liability attorney Michael Grossman at Grossman Law Offices. The toll free number is 1-855-393-0000. We can offer advice and consultation on the details of your case. Remember that the quicker you act, the better it is for you. We can get to work at preserving evidence and establishing shares of responsibility in your case. These cases require a very specific and technical knowledge, especially in product liability law. Our two decades experience with cases of product liability and personal injury litigation can be employed to ensure fair compensation is awarded or a fair settlement offer is made. Contact San Antonio product liability lawyer Michael Grossman today.