Product Liability

Product Liability

A machine with the guard removed at the factory. A tire that came apart at highway speed. A helmet that split on first impact. A battery that caught fire in a living room. When a company sells a dangerous product, the people who get hurt are the ones who trust it.

If you or someone you love was catastrophically injured or killed by a defective product, you need a product liability lawyer who is willing to take a manufacturer to trial. At Clark | von Plonski | Anderson, we build these cases from the ground up: we preserve the product, test it, dig into the company’s own records, and prepare every case for a jury.

• Millions Recovered in catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases
• Major Manufacturers including equipment, vehicle, and sporting goods companies we have litigated against
• Nationwide Reach as co-counsel, associating local counsel where required

Product Cases Are Not Ordinary Injury Cases

Manufacturers do not settle because someone got hurt. They settle when a lawyer proves the product was defective, and proves the company knew or should have known.

That takes work most firms will not do: finding and preserving the product, buying exemplar units, hiring engineers to test and tear down the design, pulling the company’s own design files, prior claims, and warranty data, and deposing the engineers who signed off.

It also takes money. We fund that work. Our clients pay nothing out of pocket, and nothing at all unless we win.

A defective product does not have to be rare to be dangerous. Under the law, a product can be defective because:

• It was built wrong (a manufacturing defect)
• It was designed wrong, so every unit is dangerous (a design defect)
• It came with inadequate warnings or instructions (a marketing defect)

Most importantly, these are strict liability claims. You do not have to prove the company was careless. You have to prove the product was defective and unreasonably dangerous when it left the company’s hands, and that the defect caused your injury.

Construction And Heavy Equipment Defects

 
Heavy equipment is our focus. These machines are powerful, expensive, and often built or modified in ways that put the operator and the crew at risk.

We handle catastrophic injury and death cases involving:

• Excavators, loaders, skid steers, and dozers: blind spots, missing cameras and alarms, failed hydraulics, unexpected movement, and inadequate operator protection
• Forklifts and telehandlers: tip-overs, missing restraint systems, defective masts, and poor visibility
• Aerial lifts, boom lifts, and scissor lifts: platform failures, tip-overs, unguarded controls, and electrocution risks
• Cranes and rigging equipment: boom and hoist failures, defective rigging hardware, and overload protection that did not work
• Trenching and shoring equipment: shields and boxes that failed under load
• Compactors, pavers, and road machines: backover hazards and missing guards
• Conveyors, crushers, and plant machinery: unguarded pinch points and defective lockout systems
• Attachments and replacement parts: couplers that released loads and parts that failed early

Other Product Cases We Handle: