Product Liability Lawyer in Sugar Land

Proving Negligence in a Sugar Land Product Liability Case

Product liability cases generally come down to showing that a company owed you a duty to provide a safe product, that it breached that duty, and that the breach caused your injury.

That breach of duty can take a few different forms, including:

• Design defects, where a flaw in the product’s design made it dangerous even when manufactured correctly
• Manufacturing defects, where poor assembly, materials, or quality control caused a specific product to malfunction
• Marketing defects, where the product lacked adequate instructions or a warning about a known risk
• Shared liability, where more than one party (e.g., a manufacturer, distributor, or retailer) contributed to the defect
• Failure to recall, where a manufacturer knew about a defect but did not follow proper recall protocols

Breach of Warranty

When filing a product liability claim in Sugar Land, the claim may allege that a breach of warranty occurred.

There are two main types of warranties:

• Express warranties: These are explicit promises made by the manufacturer, such as a written warranty included with the product.
• Implied warranties: These are assurances inferred by law, regarding a product’s fitness for its intended purpose.

While an air fryer won’t explicitly state that it will work when you plug it in, you can rightly infer that a new air fryer should work once you plug it into an outlet. A brand new fridge can reasonably be expected to keep food cold. You could also rightly expect a product with a new lithium battery to not explode. These aren’t things that have to be spelled out before a product failure is seen as a breach of warranty.

What If Someone Is Partially At Fault for Their Own Injuries?

Under Texas’ modified comparative negligence rules, as long as you’re still less than 51% at fault for an accident, you can still recover compensation; it will just be reduced by whatever percentage of fault is assigned to you. For example, if someone was using the product in a way that it wasn’t intended to be used, a defendant could argue that the plaintiff was partially to blame for their own injuries. If that plaintiff were found to be 40% at fault, they could still recover 60% of the available compensation: on a $100,000 award, that’s $60,000 that the plaintiff could still recover.

While this means you can still file a claim, even if you bear some responsibility, it also gives defendants a strong incentive to shift as much blame onto you as possible. If they can convince a judge or jury that you are 51% at fault or more, they don’t have to pay you anything.

You need an attorney who can prove fault as well as demonstrate the true extent of the defendant’s fault in a product liability case, so that you’re not unfairly blamed.