Product Liability Compensation Claims

If a business supplies products to consumers then they need to make sure those products are safe. Normally the responsibility falls square on the shoulders of the actual manufacturer of any product found to be defective. A manufacturer or producer can be a company that actually makes products, one that imports a product into this country or even businesses that customise other manufacturers products for their own stores. But stores and other retailers i.e. distributors also have responsibilities pertaining to the products that they sell on. Like most areas of personal injury law the persons found to be responsible for injuries are just as liable to prosecution and/or fines from the regulatory agencies involved as well as the court systems in each respective part of the UK.

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A person and/or company cannot be held responsible for your injuries if:

• they did not supply the product (e.g. counterfeit items bearing the manufacturers name).
• they were unaware that such an injury could occur e.g. a chemical that was deemed safe is no longer deemed such.
• someone altered the product after it left the producer.
• you assembled the product and the defect was the result of poor/incorrect assembly.
• you installed the product into another product that resulted in the fault.

the supplier cannot use the defence that the user was careless with the product, though if it can be established that the user should have known better and/or that the product was used for something other than it's proper use then at the very least your compensation damages will be reduced.

A common misconception is if a product bears a warning regarding safety concerns that you have no legal recourse should you be injured by the product. Issuing warnings and stating problems with a certain product on it's packaging does not completely remove all responsibility from the manufacturer or the retailer. Indeed this is where the complications that you would not bump up against in other areas of accident claims start to come in. For example, establishing blame when someone crashes into you is quite simple - you sue the driver of the car, not the manufacturer of the car, whether the crash was the result of a fault with the car or not. In contrast if a retailer sells you a product that is faulty and you are injured it is normally the manufacturer of the product that you will be suing. Another issue can be where a product has been made by several manufacturers such as in desktop computers where each part is made by a different firm and then put together by one or more firms along the chain. Establishing who is responsible in these cases can be tricky and sometimes the courts, or even the manufacturers themselves, will opt to share the blame with all parties involved. But establishing where the blame lies is not your responsibility as the claimant and in most cases the third parties will normally do all the leg work themselves as they try to disprove that they are the responsible party.

Secondly, you do not have to have bought the product for you to be able to receive compensation should you be injured by that item. If you received it as a gift, as a introductory offer from a store or even won it in a competition this does not negate any liability. The only issue that might come into play is how long you have actually owned the item, the longest you can generally expect to own a product and have it remain without fault is 10 years but some items do not fall into this category. You cannot expect every item you buy to be 100% safe for as long as you own it, some common sense into wear and tear expectations must be granted. If you are injured by something you have bought, though, you only have three years to make a claims against the store you bought it from or the company that made it.

We have not yet descended into the depths of litigation that you currently expect from the US. At the time of writing this article you cannot sue a company for a faulty item injuring you if you stole the item ... I hope that such continues to be true.

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