Defective products

I noticed that there is a tendency among the general public to be very skeptical of defective product suits. That is because often they too often jump to the conclusion that the product was not defective but that the person could not use it properly. Although sometimes an injury caused by a product is the result of grossly misusing that product, oftentimes it is the result of a faulty design. A good example of this is ATV's. People think these vehicles are inherently dangerous, and of course they are. However, that doesn't mean someone should automatically jump to the conclusion that the driver is at fault if he or she wipes out on the ATV and suffers an injury. That is because the accident could have been a result of the ATV being an inferior product. For example, the particular ATV being driven could have been designed so that when someone takes a turn at 20 miles it flips over. However, every other ATV on the market could be designed to take a turn at 20 miles an hour. In that situation, because the company made a product that was less safe than others on the market they knew or should have known that people would become injured as a result of this design. Therefore, it seems only fair that someone injured by this product should receive compensation. When it comes to faulty designs the law takes into account if there could have been a safer design that is also cost effective. So basically a company will only be held liable for a design when there is a better safer design they could have chosen that also would not have been too costly to implement. I don't believe that this is such a high standard or an unreasonable one, and a lot of people don't understand this, and continue to be highly skeptical of fault product law suits. Therefore, I think it is important to educate the general public about these lawsuits.

Slip and Fall cases

Slip and fall cases can be very difficult. That is because there is often a question of fault on the part of the business owners. Usually the business owners try to claim that the plaintiff is at fault for not watching where they are going, even if there are obvious hazards on the floor or other areas of the premise. However, business owners are under a duty to periodically inspect their business to make sure there are no hazards on their property that can cause harm to patrons. This is often where the question of fault comes into play. There is the question of how often inspections should be completed, and how thorough these should be. Because there are often no clear answers to these questions, slip and fall cases often end up in litigation, and don't settle as easily as most personal injury claims arising from automobile accidents. Because these cases are often difficult many attorneys are reluctant to take them. However, at Reed and Mansfield we will not hesitate to take any slip and fall cases where we believe the owners of the business are at fault for the injury, and we are fully prepared to litigate these cases, and have experience litigating several of these cases.