Product Liability Lawyer Orange County

Product liability cases are cases that involve injuries that are caused by a defective product. It can be a defective seat belt. It can be a defective medical device. It can be a defective food product of some sort. Whenever manufactures put any kind of product into the stream of commerce, they make certain warranties and they have certain obligations, to make sure that those products are not defective. They can be defective either in design, or they can be defective in manufacturing. The person that can be held accountable in a product liability case, start from the manufacturer and it goes to anybody involved in what we call the stream of commerce, so the manufacturer makes the product and he makes the product based on designs that are done by sometimes other companies, so it could also be that the designers could be included. Then once the product is manufactured, then it's given to certain distributors, and the distributors then sell it to certain retailers, so anybody in that stream of commerce can be held responsible in a product liability case. The statutes of limitations that apply to product liability cases are the same that apply generally, to personal injury cases. In the state of California that would be two years from the date of injury. Now there are exceptions to all of the statutes of limitations, and sometimes that becomes very critical when it comes to a product liability case, because many times people get injured, and they don't realize that there is a defect in the particular product, until sometime later when the manufacturer may be forced to disclose that in fact there is a defect. And at that time they can have a late discovery and these statutes of limitations, even though the injury may have occurred two years, more than two years before the statute of limitations exception will allow them still file the case.