Consumers who use dry shampoo products regularly may want to look closer at the ingredients before spraying them in their hair. A healthcare and medical research group study found high levels of a cancer-causing chemical in most dry shampoo brands.
When you buy a product, you trust it will perform as advertised. Whatever product you buy shouldn’t cause you harm. Unfortunately, many products consumers purchase can be harmful such as auto parts, medications, appliances and toys. A dangerous product may be released into the market for a variety of reasons, including unclear instructions, faulty manufacturing, unlisted side effects, and design defects. The following tips provide steps for an individual harmed by a defective product to help them get the compensation they deserve.
Premature babies or underweight infants are at risk of developing necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a severe intestinal disease. This condition causes intestinal tissue to die. It can also create a hole in their intestine, where bacteria can leak through, causing severe abdominal infections.
A horrible window blind cords death in 2016 in which a 3-year-old girl became tangled in cords and died due to strangulation has resulted in a recent award by a jury in Utah of $25 million to the young child’s family. The lawsuit — brought against manufacturers based in Utah and in California — and its recent conclusion highlight the dangers of window blind cords death for infants and toddlers. This danger is more common and serious than many people are aware.
A consolidated group of personal injury lawsuits related to the effects of the herbicide Paraquat are moving forward in a multi-district litigation process based in the federal district court for the Southern District of Illinois. This is a major step toward the resolution of claims related to Paraquat and its toxicity that have been linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease in numerous people nationwide. This Paraquat litigation seeks to establish legally the personal injury connection between Paraquat exposure and the development of debilitating Parkinson’s symptoms.
Several different parties may bear liability when a defective product results in personal injuries. These will typically involve the designer and manufacturer of the product, wholesale distributors, as well as retailers who directly sell the product. With “brick and mortar” retailers, it’s clear who is selling the product — we’ve actually walked through the doors of their local store, picked the product off a shelf, paid for the purchase, and taken the product home to use. However, with online market sites — especially the biggest online seller, Amazon — it can be much less obvious who the “seller” is from a legal perspective. That often results in the question, “Is there Amazon product liability for a defective product that was purchased through – but not necessarily ‘sold by’ — Amazon?” This question becomes more urgent when considering a recent complaint about flammable children’s pajamas sold through Amazon.
In June of 2021, a Congressional committee produced a report describing the results of its investigation over the last two years of the Rock ‘n Play Hammock produced and sold by Fisher-Price and Mattel, two giant corporations in the children’s and infant’s toy and products market. This device was a sleeping hammock designed for infants that held the baby at a 30-degree angle of inclination for nighttime sleeping. The extensive investigation included documents from the design, production, and sales of the sleeper by Fisher-Price, as well as interviews and testimony from company employees and investigators from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which had earlier conducted its own investigation into the Fisher-Price hammock deaths.
Many different types of consumer products may end up being subject to recall for defects in design and/or manufacture. While some of those defects may result in products that simply don’t work as intended for the person who purchased them, other defects may place the user in actual physical danger. And when the product being recalled is one that is specifically intended to keep us safe from other sources of significant danger, the potential for injury or death is even greater. This is the situation involved in a major Kidde smoke alarm recall just recently announced.
Many of us have pieces of home exercise equipment that may get used regularly or get stuck in a closet. During the last year of the Covid-19 lockdown, many home exercise units have gotten much more attention than ever. One byproduct of this extra attention is increased awareness that some of these units may be dangerous to adult users and, more likely, to young children and pets. An example is a May 5, 2021, Peloton treadmill recall that follows the death of one young child and at least 39 other injuries.
Defects in the design or manufacturing of consumer products are found all the time. Diligent manufacturers will discover them through testing and further refine their products before selling them to the public. However, far too often, defects are not corrected until after injuries or deaths to users of the products force recalls, replacements, re-designs, and other corrective actions. Usually, the corrective action involves actually changing the product to something safer. Sometimes, though, manufacturers choose to rely upon “Band-Aid” solutions that merely hide or postpone the problem — this type of behavior may make Takata airbags a repeating problem.
Sacramento Injury Attorneys Blog