If you make pork sirloin for a big dinner party, and if you undercook the steaks and give everyone food poisoning, then you’re responsible for the suffering of all your guests. They may want compensation for lost work hours and medical bills depending on how well they know you, but even your friends and family members will want an apology.
If a major company makes a defective product that makes people sick or causes them injuries, then their customers also deserve compensation. They may claim their customers didn’t use their products right, and in some cases they may be right, but if you suffer an injury and it’s because something you bought wasn’t safe enough or has a defect, then that major company can and should be held responsible for the damages they cause.
Not Every Accident Is Our Own Fault
The people file lawsuits in America don’t always have the best reputation. Too many people dismiss them as suing corporations to grab hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars because they got a scrape from falling off a bicycle or cutting themselves with a kitchen knife. If people hurt themselves from using a product then they should take responsibility for their own injuries instead of using them as an excuse to get money for nothing.
However, this argument is harder to make when you realize how often the products we buy can be unsafe. If a faulty battery causes your smartphone to literally burn a hole in your pocket, then the company that made it owes you a new pair of pants, medical bills for burns, the cost of a new smartphone, and all the important data you lost when the device carrying it melted.
If your motorcycle helmet has such a terrible design that it splits open without protecting your head or if the padding easily catches fire, then the company that built it would have some significant responsibility for the injuries you sustain during a motorcycle accident no matter who caused the collision.
Product Safety Is Not Guaranteed
People like to believe that consumer products in America are safe, and for the most part they are. Partly this is because if products are obviously dangerous, no one will buy them. Partly this is because the government sets regulations for certain products so that they meet safety and quality standards and come with instructions that describe how to use the product safely.
However, sometimes an unsafe product will reach the market, either because a product designer made a big mistake no one caught or because the corporation found the mistake, ran the numbers, and decided that selling a defective product would make them more money than fixing the design would. That second situation happens more often than a lot of people would like to believe, and the corporations who do so will cover up these intentional mistakes with aggressive marketing and excuses that blame everything except their products.
Personal Injury Lawsuits Both Compensate And Protect
The reason personal injury and product liability laws exist is because many times individuals and corporations don’t take responsibility for the things they sell to their customers. Sometimes it really is a person looking to make a quick buck by making a mountain out of a molehill, but most of the time these cases are brought by people who suffered real, serious injuries and who need the money to avoid going bankrupt from the medical bills and lost income. For something expensive like a car or a house, they might also have to pay back a loan on a defective product.
Bringing a lawsuit against a corporation for a defective and harmful product isn’t frivolous, it’s an important way for regular people to stand up to big businesses and hold them accountable for their actions. These suits change the math corporations run on selling defective products, and they encourage companies to make safety a priority even though it costs them more. So if a defective product causes an injury or damages your property (including the product itself), remember that demanding compensation and filing a lawsuit is only fair.
