Personal injury laws usually focus on establishing negligence, as demonstrated by the defendant. When it comes to suing the maker of a defective product, the legal system no longer focuses on negligence. Instead it insists on proof that the plaintiff was injured.
If a claimant has no proof of injury, then he or she cannot make a product liability claim.
Plaintiffs can increase the amount awarded by producing proof of a physical injury.
Still, the legal system recognizes the loss associated with financial injury.
In addition, a plaintiff does have the right to sue a product maker that has caused that consumer/plaintiff to experience pain and suffering.
A Personal Injury Lawyer in Kitchener that gets approached by a potential client must assess the expected cost for pursuing the presented case. Lawyers feel reluctant to accept a case where the cost might exceed to size of the possible award.
A lawyer defending the maker of the product might point to the extent of the injury.
That lawyer might plan to question the product user’s part in causing that same injury. Did the user follow the directions on the package? If not, then the user/plaintiff could be held partly responsible for any harm experienced while using the allegedly defective product.
Another way the defendant’s lawyer might find it advantageous to use the injury’s presence:
The defendant’s lawyer would look closely at the amount of time that passed between the occurrence of the injury-causing incident and the victim’s decision to visit a doctor, hospital or medical facility. If the victim had allowed more than 24 hours to pass, then that would show a failure to mitigate the injury’s effects.
Victims are expected to do their best to mitigate an injury’s effects. By demonstrating a plaintiff’s failure to perform as expected, after being injured, then the defendant’s attorney can reduce the size of the plaintiff’s award.
Plaintiffs can make it harder for the defendant’s lawyer to use any of the above tactics by joining to file a complaint. That would be done after each of the clients has been injured while using the defective product. This works best when a defect has caused problems for a large number of consumers.
Of course, that approach also has an effect on the size of any award that the court would choose to give the plaintiffs. They would all need to share that money. Yet the threat posed by the plaintiffs’ ability to create such a challenge for a defense team does help to keep product makers from putting a harmful item on the market. Moreover, an entire line of departments has created any given product. The plaintiff has the right to sue more than one creator or marketer.