Unsafe Product Lawyers in New Jersey & New York

Cases We Handle

Unsafe Products

Design and manufacturing defects can make even everyday items dangerous and sometimes deadly.

MDLR recovered $500,000 for the parents of a one year old baby girl who perished in a house fire ignited by a defective dryer. The parents had left their child in the care of a neighbor, who had placed the child in a playpen in a third floor room where it was quiet. When the incident occurred, the neighbor was on the second floor with her own eight month old. She heard the downstairs fire alarm and went into the kitchen to see flames streaming from the dryer. The neighbor ran to the second floor, took her child outside and placed her in the family's car. She attempted to rescue the one year old on the third floor but was overwhelmed by smoke and ran out of the house. Subsequent rescue efforts by firefighters were successful in removing the child from the fire. Tragically, the child had suffered irreversible brain damage from smoke inhalation and passed away. The incident occurred on the child's first birthday. With the help of a leading fire expert and engineer, MD&L was able to demonstrate that a dryer wheel had come loose from the dryer causing clothing to pass into the internal dryer compartment and eventually ignite into the flames that caused the death of the infant child.

Injuries caused by unsafe products are making the news more and more every day with the influx of products from third world nations. Deaths, injuries and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $700 billion annually, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The federal commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks, serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of products.

All too often protection comes after product hazards like flammability are discovered, and there is no applicable federal liability law. Products liability litigation allows consumers to take action against manufacturers, distributors and sellers of defective and dangerous products. Unsafe product litigation generally concerns design defects, manufacturing defects and defects in labeling and warnings. New Jersey and New York have laws on product safety and litigation. A case may be argued in terms of the defendant's negligence, strict liability or breach of warranty. Frequently, issues of responsibility are weighed in terms of whether the product is unreasonably unsafe and whether or not the consumer acted reasonably in using the product.