Burn injuries are often caused by someone’s carelessness or failure to act (negligence), or by a defective product. Negligence Negligence is the failure to use reasonable due care to avoid a foreseeable injury to a person, place or thing. If you are negligent and your negligence results in injury to another person to whom you owe a “duty of care”, you may be liable for payment of damages arising from any injuries caused resulting from your negligence. A person may be considered “careless” or negligent if he or she fails to meet the standard of due care that is called for in a particular situation. The law generally requires that an individual exercise the same level of “due care” that a reasonable person would exercise under similar circumstances. This is referred to as the “reasonable person” or “reasonable man” standard. Defective Products Product liability refers to responsibility for harm caused by a defective product. A product liability claim may be brought against any member of the distribution chain of a dangerous or defective product, including the designer, manufacturer, supplier of component parts, the wholesaler, and the retail store that sold the product. Product liability claims may arise out of negligence, breach of warranty or strict liability. In a negligence claim, the plaintiff must show that a manufacturer, seller, wholesaler or other party involved in the distributive chain had a duty to exercise reasonable care in the process of manufacturing or selling a product and failed to fulfill that duty, resulting in injury to the plaintiff. Negligence consists of doing something that a person of ordinary prudence would not do under the same or similar circumstances; or failing to do something that a person of ordinary prudence would do under the same or similar circumstances. Examples of negligence include failure to anticipate probable uses of the product, failure to inspect or test the product adequately, failure to issue adequate warnings or instructions regarding the use of the product, or any other aspect of the manufacturing or distribution process where due care is not used. A breach of warranty claim arises under the law of contracts, where the law imposes certain "implied warranties" on the sale of goods. Such warranties include the warranty of merchantability (that the goods are in proper condition for use and free of defects), and the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose (e.g., a refrigerator must be able to keep food cold and fresh; a chair must be capable of supporting a person’s weight). These warranties are called implied warranties because the law assumes that they apply even if they are not expressly stated. If a product does not meet these standards, the purchaser may have the right to return it and get back the purchase price, or sometimes to receive monetary damages. The law of contracts covers economic loss caused by the breach of warranties in the sale of goods. The Uniform Commercial Code, Article 2, also deals with the sales of goods and the implied and express warranties of merchantability in the sales of goods §§ 2-314 and 2-315. Strict liability refers to “liability without fault”. In a strict liability case, liability does not hinge on the defendant’s care or lack of care; if the product is shown to be defective, the defendant will be held liable regardless of whether they exercised the appropriate care or not. Thus, under strict liability, if the product has a defect that causes harm, the defendant will be held liable for the harm caused. In order to establish a product liability claim under strict liability, the plaintiff must show: - A defect in the product caused the injury;
- The product was being used in a manner consistent with the way it was intended to be used; and
- The product was not substantially changed or modified from the time it left the seller or manufacturer’s hands.
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