Every week, federal government agencies send out nearly twenty product recalls. That’s in addition to defective products discovered and sent out by manufacturers themselves.
What happens when you don’t know about a recall?
With so many recalls, it would be easy to miss one. Let’s say you do and then are injured by the defective product. What does this mean for your impending product recall lawsuit? Do you have a case or is the manufacturer off the hook?
The answer is… it depends. How much effort did the manufacturer make to reach owners of the product? Recalls can be issued a number of different ways: they can be posted in local news outlets, they are posted by the appropriate agency of the federal government or they can be mailed directly to impacted consumers.
Effort matters in product recall lawsuits
A manufacturer that makes an honest effort to notify consumers by contacting them directly is going to be in a stronger position in court. A plaintiff who ignored the notice will have a problem in a civil lawsuit. But all hope is not lost for the plaintiff. There are still a number of reasons that a consumer, acting in good faith, simply missed the notice for a recall.
The raw volume of recalls mitigates the responsibility of the plaintiff. Furthermore, if they purchased the item secondhand— like a used car—there would be no way for the manufacturer to even know who they were. The plaintiff’s rights are not easily dismissed.
This is especially true in states where comparative negligence, rather than contributory negligence, is the defining legal principle. In comparative negligence, even if a plaintiff is found to hold one-third of the responsibility, they can still recoup the remaining two-thirds of the damages. In contributory negligence, if the plaintiff can be found at fault at all, the manufacturer is off the hook.
The bottom line:
Follow up on recalls. It will keep you safer and ultimately strengthen your case if you have to go to court. As always, it’s important to stay informed: learn more about the three types of defective product liability claims.