It’s a phrase we hear thrown around all the time in relation to lawsuits, and it’s one that many people vaguely recognize but may not fully understand: defective product. This week, Pleading Ignorance examines defective products.
A defective product is one that doesn’t work as expected and puts the user at risk of unexpected danger. Defects can occur in how the product is designed, how it’s manufactured or how it’s marketed (if the advertising for a product gives unreasonable expectations for how safe the product is).
Defective products can be any product a person buys: medications, medical devices, furniture, food, toys, automobiles…you get the picture. Even if the consumer doesn’t purchase the specific component but purchases a product that involves the defective component (think here of defective automobile brakes, where the consumer purchases the car, which includes the brakes), the product is still defective. In such cases, the victim may be able to sue the manufacturer of the defective component part and the maker of the overall product (in this example, the maker of the brake and the vehicle manufacturer).
Now—and this is important—the product must be used in the manner it was designed for. Using the product in an unintended manner and hurting yourself doesn’t make the product defective. So, if you use a knife to pick a lock and cut yourself, that doesn’t mean the knife is defective. Likewise, if you buy something from, say, IKEA (see photo above) and think that you know better than their engineers and you go and toss the supplied instructions for a more aggressive (and truly) DIY approach, don’t go crying “defective product” later when whatever you’ve built doesn’t quite “work”.
Also, there are some products that are inherently dangerous (chainsaws, explosives and so on). People claiming that these are defective have to show that there was a lack of proper warning about the safety related to the product or they have to show that the product malfunctioned even though they followed all instructions. If an explosive works as intended, it’s going to explode. But, if there weren’t adequate safety warnings about how to safely set off the explosive, or if the explosive went off before it was meant to, through no fault of the user, then the explosive could be a defective product.
Products that do not carry adequate warnings about their use or the risks involved in their use may also be considered defective. This is where some drug liability lawsuits come in. A drug may work exactly as intended but if the drug causes serious side effects and users aren’t warned about those side effects, then the drug could be considered defective.
To protect yourself, always read the safety warnings and instructions with any product you purchase and be sure to use the product only in the manner it was intended to be used.
A rather big announcement this week for people who purchased sulfur contaminated drywall from Lowes, the do-it-yourself (DIY) home building supplies retailer. They have agreed to pay the equivalent of $6.5 million in gift cards, to end a class action lawsuit that claimed they sold defective drywall.
So if you bought defective drywall—i.e. sulfur laden drywall—Chinese drywall—you know the stuff—at Lowes, you could be eligible for a gift card. FYI—there doesn’t appear to be any information on how much the gift cards will be for.
The settlement agreement, interestingly, didn’t specify where Lowe’s obtained their defective drywall, but in a report by the Wall Street Journal, a company spokesperson is quoted as follows “Lowe’s has been assured by vendors who provided stock drywall for sales in our stores that drywall they provided was not imported from China. But the settlement includes claims of all types of allegedly defective drywall people claim to have purchased from Lowe’s.”
I don’t know if it’s just me but $6.5 million seems a rather paltry amount, considering the damage inflicted on tens of thousands of unsuspecting homeowners. Although it is larger than the settlement awarded in the first Chinese drywall trial brought by Lisa and Armin Seifart. More on that in a minute.
According to the Homeowners Consumer Center in Washington, D.C, Chinese drywall has Read the rest of this entry »
Fisher-Price is sending out an APB for their Little People Play ‘n Go Campsite. It’s a product recall affecting about 96,000 campsite toys in the US, 14,000 in Canada. The 7-piece Play ‘n Go Campsites—product number R6935—were sold between October 2009 and August 2010, retailing for about $15.
So what—or who—is at issue? Seems the culprit is that little Sonya Lee. But just who is Sonya Lee and why all the fuss?
Here’s what we discovered (they’re big on “discovering” at Little People–see video above; Aaron Neville sings…) on the Fisher Price Little People “Meet the Little People Friends” d-base:
Favorite Activity: Taking Care of Animals; Note: Sonya Lee claims to be able to understand what animals “say”. When camping at the Little People Play ‘n Go Campsite, she also enjoys playing guitar by the campfire and roasting unusually large marshmallows.
Favorite Animal: Her kitty, but she “really loves all animals”. Kitty is with Sonya Lee at the Campsite
Favorite Color: Pink
Favorite Season: Spring
Favorite Food: Carrots
Cohorts: “All the animals”—and has a friend who goes by the name “Squeakles”
Sonya Lee’s been charged with breaking at the waist—into two parts—which can become choking hazards. Thankfully, while there have been eight reports of Sonya Lee breaking, there have been no reports of injury, according to Fisher-Price. No other figures in the Campsite set have been identified as posing a hazard.
For those who may have trouble identifying Sonya Lee, she wears an ID label on the bottom of her feet that says, “Sonya Lee”. She was also last seen—at the campsite—wearing a green sweater with a purple camera around her neck.
If you see Sonya Lee—with a Little People Play ‘n Go Campsite—in your family room, play room, child’s bedroom, bathtub, backyard…really, anywhere, you’re advised to stop using it immediately and to contact Fisher-Price for a free replacement.
Fisher-Price can be contacted at: 800-432-5437.
A study done by Canadian researchers looks at suicide barriers—those grids or bars on bridges and places like the observation deck of the Empire State Building that are supposed to prevent would-be suicide victims. According to an article at healthfinder.gov, the study showed that, “suicide barriers on bridges may fail to reduce overall rates of people jumping to their deaths because jumpers may go elsewhere to commit suicide.”
I read that line and thought, “No kidding.”
Read it again to ensure you understand what the study was trying to ascertain. The idea was to see if having suicide barriers in a geographical area translated into a lower suicide rate for that area as a whole—ie, not just whether the rate of suicides went down at the specific location where the barriers had been installed.
The article goes on to quote Dr. Mark Sinyor, resident physician at the University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s psychiatry department as saying, “This research shows that constructing a barrier on a bridge with a high rate of suicide by jumping is likely to reduce or eliminate suicides at that bridge but it may not alter absolute suicide rates by jumping when there are comparable bridges nearby.”
Yes, you read that correctly. And I don’t mean to belittle the study (ok, maybe I do) but let’s try to make some analogies here. Will putting a lock on a car with a GPS system inside prevent the theft of a GPS system in an unlocked car nearby? Will living in a “dry town” Read the rest of this entry »
A bit of a landmark lawsuit snuck under that radar this week. A couple from Florida—whom you may have heard of if you are following the Chinese Drywall debacle—Lisa and Armin Seifart—were awarded about $2.5 million by a jury in Miami-Dade County, Florida, in damages and expenses in their defective drywall lawsuit. They had asked for $4 million.
The Seifarts brought their lawsuit against the Miami-based drywall supplier, Banner Supply, and drywall manufacturer, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin. It turns out Banner had an agreement with Knauf Plasterboard to replace some 2.3 million square feet of defective Chinese drywall with domestically made product. But, smelling an opportunity to save a buck, Banner only replaced the defective drywall in homes where builders and/or installers actually complained about the smell. Yup, that stinks. Pun intended. Had these companies acted with conscience, thousands of people could have been spared the expense, health problems and general stress that has accompanied this mess. Not to mention the courts’ time that will be used to help in the clean-up.
FYI—we are not talking small numbers here. There are some 36,000 homes, according to media reports, affected by the dodgy drywall in Florida alone, and possibly as many as 100,000 nationwide, including California, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, and Louisiana. (More problems for the people in the beleaguered Gulf states.)
But let’s get back to the Seifarts for a moment. Two years and $700,000 later—that’s the money they have so far shelled out on repairs to their five bedroom, five bathroom pad—the estimated market value of their house is currently about $200,000.
That’s if they could sell it given the stigma that Chinese drywall carries. Be honest—would you buy a house that had contained sulphur-infected drywall in its original build?
So even though the Seifarts have gutted their house and are rebuilding, and have been awarded $2.5 million to help them recover—they may be stuck.
It also remains to be seen whether or not the Seirfarts actually collect their settlement. Just recently, seven Virginia homeowners were awarded $2.6 million by a federal judge, as settlement of their Chinese Drywall suit, but because the manufacturer—Taishsan Gypsum Co did not take part in the proceedings, the verdict is in limbo, as are the homeowners.
Let’s hope the Seifart’s verdict will make a difference.