Articles Posted in Product Liability

Cannabis is still a controversial topic in the United States. Although some states have deregulated marijuana and even allowed for recreational use, others have maintained criminal liability and punishments for the possession and distribution of marijuana. As the legal and regulatory landscape for cannabis continues to change, certain companies specializing in cannabis-based products are cropping up in states that allow medical or recreational consumption. Since this is such a new frontier, however, there are few safety measures in place to ensure that patients and patrons who purchase these products aren’t receiving a potentially dangerous product.

The federal government recently reaffirmed its long-standing position that federal prosecutors should not focus their resources on prosecuting cannabis-related crimes. In 2009, the Department of Justice issued a memo instructing federal prosecutors to forgo investigating criminal activity involving cannabis if the suspect’s conduct clearly conformed with the state’s medical marijuana laws. Five years later, Congress enacted an amendment that barred the Department of Justice from allocating federal funds to programs that would prevent states from passing legislation allowing medical marijuana.

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Nestle Corporation is one of the biggest food manufacturers in the world, with many people associating the brand with the chocolates and other sweets it makes. It also produces a wide variety of frozen foods under a variety of labels, including Stouffer’s, Lean Cuisine, and DiGiorno pizza. The manufacturing process for frozen foods can be quite complex and typically involves many different steps, including everything from preparing the food and packaging it to freezing it.

Recent reports indicate that Nestle has recalled roughly three million units of its frozen food products that contain spinach over fears that the spinach contains glass. A wide variety of products are affected, including pizzas, pasta dishes, lasagnas, and other popular Nestle dishes. The company has released a list of production codes that customers can use to identify whether a particular unit is part of the recall. The production code is printed on the side of the DiGiorno, Lean Cuisine, and Stouffer’s packages.

To recover compensation after suffering injuries from a dangerous product, the plaintiff must show that the product was designed in an unreasonably dangerous manner or that the particular unit the plaintiff received suffered from a defect during the manufacturing process that rendered the unit unreasonably dangerous. A food item that contains a dangerous foreign object not originally designed to be part of the food item satisfies the latter prong of this test.

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CBS news recently issued a news story stating that major car manufacturer Ford Motor Company has initiated a recall of roughly 391,000 of its Ford Ranger truck vehicles after a man riding in one of the vehicles died when one of the truck’s airbags exploded. The recall covers Ranger trucks manufactured between the years of 2004 and 2006.

According to authorities familiar with the accident, the decedent was driving his Ford Ranger pickup when he collided with a cow that had found its way onto the road. After making contact with the cow, the man lost control of the vehicle and collided into a fence. It is unclear whether the airbag deployed when the truck collided with the cow or when the truck collided with the fence. Reports prepared about the incident indicate that the man died as a result of metal shrapnel impaling his neck and that the shrapnel was created when the activator in the airbag exploded instead of inflating the device. The investigation also suggested that but for the defective airbag device the collision would have been moderate and unlikely to have resulted in the driver’s death.

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Johnson & Johnson, a global manufacturer of household products, was recently ordered to pay a $72 million judgment to the family of a woman who died from ovarian cancer. The decedent’s illness was linked to her use of Johnson & Johnson’s Shower to Shower and Baby Powder products over a number of decades.

The jury’s verdict included $10 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $62 million in punitive damages, which is a special type of damages designed to punish a defendant for reckless, wanton, or willful conduct while also serving as a deterrent to other companies and actors.

The lawsuit alleged that the company failed to provide warnings about the potential risk of developing cancer associated with its talcum powder products in order to increase product sales and profits. According to evidence offered at trial, Johnson & Johnson knew that its talcum powder products posed the risk of cancer as early as the 1980s, but it failed to disclose this information to the general public or regulatory officials.

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There are hundreds of thousands of products in our modern, consumer-driven world. While many of these are products that we may select and purchase of our own accord, there are numerous other products that we are forced to encounter on a daily basis. Regardless of the circumstance, products can pose a serious danger to the health and safety of you and your family.

Every state has adopted a consumer protection law that allows consumers who suffer injuries due to a dangerous product to bring a claim against the manufacturer and other potentially liable parties. Although there are some differences in these laws, they generally impose the same requirements on plaintiffs seeking compensation from a product manufacturer or distributor.

In general, product makers owe the public a duty to design products that are reasonably safe and to ensure that individual products on the manufacturing line do not suffer from defects that render them unreasonably dangerous. The product liability laws also impose liability against defendants who fail to provide an adequate warning about certain dangers that a product may pose, or who fail to provide sufficient instructions for using the product in a safe and reasonable manner.

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When it comes to owning and operating a vehicle, one of the biggest nightmares you can experience is a recall, which indicates that something is wrong with a significant number of a manufacturer’s vehicles. In 2014 alone, there were over 500 vehicle recalls that encompassed over 50 million automobiles. This is an overwhelming amount of information and can seem daunting to many vehicle owners.

Although some recalls are relatively harmless, in many cases these recalls can affect critical components of a vehicle, including the brakes, steering wheel, and engine components. Earlier this year, Japanese auto parts maker Takata found itself in hot water when major defects were discovered in its air bag devices, leading to a massive recall. While some recalls are minor and can be fixed easily at a local car dealer, others are far more extensive and can lead to severe injuries or even death.

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