So you’ve just bought your new car for which you’ve spent thousands of dollars on. It’s a brand new model, straight from the dealership. However, you take it out for a spin and your break malfunctions leading to a terrible accident. It’s clearly the manufacturer’s fault but what can you do in this case? Luckily for you, this is the perfect representation of a product liability case, which is one of the most lucrative fields of expertise in the entire law. However, filing a claim of the kind requires thorough knowledge of different laws as well as a lot of experience on handling the case itself because it would commonly include a jury which you’d have to convince.
Filing Product Liability Claims
It’s worth noting that as per the current legislation on the territory of the province of Ontario, you can file product liability claims under two separate premises – Contractual and Common law.
Filing a claim in Milton under the grounds provided to you by the Contractual law could be incredibly beneficial. The main reason for which is that you are essentially implying a breach of contract which could lead to some serious compensations. Apart from all of the injuries, you’d also be capable of getting thoroughly compensated for the vehicle itself. This is due to the fact that aside from the regular duty required by the common law, there is also an additional duty of care implied by the sales-purchase contract.
Hidden Defects
This means that the seller is legally obligated to disclose all sorts of information regarding particular defects in the object of the sale. Hidden defects, as in this case, are also grounds for compensatory claims, regardless of whether the seller knew about them or no. In the first case, the claim is going to be dully civil while in the second, depending on the particular situation it could even get to criminal prosecution. However, the case in point which is subjected to personal injury law is a part of the civil law and there aren’t going to be any criminal charges. This is due to the fact that product liability cases seek monetary compensation and not to legally punish the perpetrator through a penalty, provided by the criminal legislation.
It’s also worth noting that unlike seeking reparations under common law provisions, doing so by claiming responsibility set forth through the contractual law, you can exceed the boundaries offered by common law. In any case, the claims which are filed for product liability are going to be extremely high, especially if they involve a fatality. The main reason for this is that they are usually targeted towards influential companies with billions of dollars in capital.
However, there are plenty of personal injury lawyers that have won millions of dollars as compensation for victims of product liability cases and they will be able to help you.