Lawsuits over defective medical devices fall under an area of the law known as products liability. There are three different types of product liability cases, they include:
- Design defects: A design defect means that there was a defect in the design of the product itself. In other words, the entire product line was inherently flawed and never should have been allowed on the market in the first place.
- Manufacturing defects: A manufacturing defect means that the product was designed properly, but something went wrong during the manufacturing of the product that caused a defect. It could be that the entire line of products was manufactured defectively. However, it could also be that only certain products, possibly ones from a certain year or a certain manufacturing facility, were defective.
- Failure-to-warn: These cases are limited to products that are inherently dangerous no matter how they are designed or manufactured. These products must carry adequate warnings of the dangers. Inherently dangerous products can be on the market in some cases, but they must be properly labelled and properly marketed. If a company created dangerous false impressions in the minds of consumers, then the company could be held liable for any resulting damages.
Regardless of which type of products liability your specific claim falls into, to hold a company liable you will need to prove that they failed to live up to their legal obligation. If a company put an unsafe medical product out on to the market, they must be held responsible for the resulting damages.
