Accidents happen, and the injuries they cause keep Florida hospitals and emergency rooms busy. Injuries in the state in 2020 resulted in more than 1.5 million emergency room visits and almost 140,000 hospitalizations, according to the Florida Department of Health. In Tallahassee’s Leon County, injuries that year led to more than 20,000 emergency room visits and 1,110 hospitalizations.
Falling down the stairs because of a misstep or slicing your hand open because you got distracted while dicing onions can truly be called accidental. However, what if the injury occurred because of a defective consumer product? What if a consumer product failed to work properly, was poorly designed or haphazardly manufactured, and the defect played a distinct role in causing your injury or, in some cases, an illness?
Well, the Tallahassee-based personal injury lawyers of Akbar Thomas would likely tell you to hold off calling it an “accident” and suggest that the details of what exactly caused the injury or illness deserve closer examination. That’s because Florida’s product liability laws allow consumers to pursue compensation when defective products cause personal injuries, illness or death.
Product liability laws compensate people for medical bills, other damages
Product liability laws evolved to compensate people for expenses and other damages incurred if injured or rendered sick by a defective product through no fault of their own. Medical care is expensive, and even if covered to some extent by insurance, recovering from defective product-related injuries or illness can result in overwhelming medical bills and related expenses.
Serious injuries can require costly surgery, diagnostic testing, hospitalization, physical rehabilitation, prescription medications, and related medical services. Meanwhile, recovering from your injuries can impact your earnings by keeping you from working for days, weeks, months, or even longer. Longer-term, disabling injuries might end your career or limit your ability to handle work responsibilities in the same capacity you did before the injury.
In addition to impacting your finances, injuries or illness caused by a defective product also causes pain and suffering. The duration of most victims’ pain and suffering tends to last from the onset of the injury until recovery, with surgeries and physical rehabilitation typically compounding the experience. However, the nature of some injuries and illnesses can result in longer-term painful conditions that may prove permanent. Some victims also suffer long-term impacts from mental pain, characterized by post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
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Accidents happen, and the injuries they cause keep Florida hospitals and emergency rooms busy. Injuries in the state in 2020 resulted in more than 1.5 million emergency room visits and almost 140,000 hospitalizations, according to the Florida Department of Health. In Tallahassee’s Leon County, injuries that year led to more than 20,000 emergency room visits and 1,110 hospitalizations.
Falling down the stairs because of a misstep or slicing your hand open because you got distracted while dicing onions can truly be called accidental. However, what if the injury occurred because of a defective consumer product? What if a consumer product failed to work properly, was poorly designed or haphazardly manufactured, and the defect played a distinct role in causing your injury or, in some cases, an illness?
Well, the Tallahassee-based personal injury lawyers of Akbar Thomas would likely tell you to hold off calling it an “accident” and suggest that the details of what exactly caused the injury or illness deserve closer examination. That’s because Florida’s product liability laws allow consumers to pursue compensation when defective products cause personal injuries, illness or death.
Product liability laws compensate people for medical bills, other damages
Product liability laws evolved to compensate people for expenses and other damages incurred if injured or rendered sick by a defective product through no fault of their own. Medical care is expensive, and even if covered to some extent by insurance, recovering from defective product-related injuries or illness can result in overwhelming medical bills and related expenses.
Serious injuries can require costly surgery, diagnostic testing, hospitalization, physical rehabilitation, prescription medications, and related medical services. Meanwhile, recovering from your injuries can impact your earnings by keeping you from working for days, weeks, months, or even longer. Longer-term, disabling injuries might end your career or limit your ability to handle work responsibilities in the same capacity you did before the injury.
In addition to impacting your finances, injuries or illness caused by a defective product also causes pain and suffering. The duration of most victims’ pain and suffering tends to last from the onset of the injury until recovery, with surgeries and physical rehabilitation typically compounding the experience. However, the nature of some injuries and illnesses can result in longer-term painful conditions that may prove permanent. Some victims also suffer long-term impacts from mental pain, characterized by post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
In general, defective product lawsuits are argued under the legal theory of either strict liability or negligence. Strict liability is based on the plaintiff proving that the defendant’s product was unreasonably dangerous and was responsible for the defendant’s injuries. With negligence, the defendant must prove that the plaintiff was negligent in producing or marketing the product and that this negligence was responsible for the damages. Other legal theories that can be brought into defective product lawsuits cover fraud, breach of warranty, and misrepresentation, all of which can enhance the likelihood of receiving punitive damages (see below).
Florida law allows victims to pursue damages even when they may have been partially at fault for the incident that caused the injury. The victim still needs to prove the relevant product defect and that it contributed to the injury, but any damages awarded will be lowered proportionally to account for the victim’s role in the incident.
