Articles Posted in Product Liability

Dangerous manufacturer defects are the cause of many across the United States including those involving insufficient warnings, design defect, and maker error in the product.

Every year, they cause substantial injury and even many deaths. Some frequent sources of deadly product defects include medications, lawn sprays, automobiles, business construction equipment, and even home building components.

Contact the attorneys of our law firm if a dangerous company product harmed you in an accident. A skilled attorney, experienced in product liability law, can speak with you about your injury and whether or not you may have a case against the manufacturer.

Recent verdicts against 3M have focused more attention on the spate of lawsuits filed against the company and what will happen going forward.

There are over a quarter of a million lawsuits against 3M pending, and the company may be facing serious legal liability. We think that 3M may have no choice but to settle the lawsuits. In the meantime, we are continuously being asked how much a 3M earplug lawsuit is worth.

Legal Advice for Injured Soldiers

What is the Roundup Lawsuit Payout?

The lawsuits filed on behalf of the tens of thousands of people who were exposed to Roundup have turned into one of the largest mass tort litigation cases of all time.

In the wake of the multi-billion dollar Roundup settlement, people have been asking our law firm for legal advice about whether they have a valid claim. They are also asking us about the average settlement in the case.

Product liability lawsuits are some of the most newsworthy court cases. Many people have heard of large-scale settlements that can reach into the billions of dollars. For example, the makers of the weed killer Roundup recently agreed to pay $10 billion to settle over 10,000 product liability cases.

Another example is the hundreds of millions of dollars that automakers paid out for the defective Taketa airbags that they put in cars.

However, there is a lot that must happen from the time that the claim is filed by the injured person through the time that the defendant pays to settle a lawsuit that claims that their product harmed someone. In Illinois, the product liability law is found in 735 ILCS 5/. Part 21 specifically focuses on product liability law.

For decades, baby powder was viewed as Johnson & Johnson’s flagship product. The company started selling baby powder with talc in it all the way back in 1894, only eight years after the company was founded.

However, Johnson & Johnson’s century-plus history of marketing talc-based baby powder is now over as several crushing jury verdicts have made selling the product a high-risk proposition. Juries have found the pharmaceutical giant’s product responsible for cases of cancer and have ordered the company to pay billions of dollars in damages.

Juries Have Issued Large Talc Powder Verdicts

2020 promises to be a busy and eventful year in product liability litigation against hernia mesh manufacturers. There are several bellwether cases in multidistrict litigation that are scheduled to begin trial in 2020.

The defendants are fighting these cases and have not settled them or conceded any type of liability. These bellwether cases are crucial because there is a large number of potential cases yet to be filed in hernia mesh lawsuits. Millions of surgeries have relied upon the implant, and the failure rate is estimated as high as 12-30%. Moreover, many of the plaintiffs do not realize until years after the surgery that they were injured because some of the mesh implants can take time to erode.

Bellweather Hernia Lawsuit Trails: An Indication of What is to Come

After several high-profile jury losses that resulted in large verdicts against it, Bayer is faced with a spiraling legal crisis from sales of the weed killer Roundup. Now, there is strong talk that the German company may be close to putting some of its legal woes that it inherited when it acquired Monsanto behind it by settling the lawsuits.

The media has reported that the settlement number could reach as high as $10 billion. Still, given the harsh punishment that juries have meted out to the company, any type of settlement may be a prudent bet for Bayer as the stock market has punished the stock in the past year since news broke of the jury verdicts against Roundup related to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma cases.

The Settlement Talks Have Stabilized the Stock

Cooking spray seems to be an innocuous kitchen product that puts oil in a form that is convenient to use. However, like any spray product, there are dangers associated with the product since the contents are under pressure. Recently, there have been several lawsuits that have been filed by the manufacturers of Pam cooking spray that were all filed on the same day.

The plaintiffs suffered injury when cans of this cooking spray exploded, leaving them with serious disfiguring injuries. The lawsuits claim that there is a defect in the product that caused them to explode, although the company maintains that its products are safe and any explosions must have been due to improper use.

One of the overlooked complications associated with using cooking sprays in the kitchen is that they are used on or in close proximity to stoves. This heats contents that are already under pressure and makes them even more potentially dangerous. Specifically, Pam contains propellants designed to make the product spray through the vents. The company will not reveal exactly what these propellants are, but the lawsuits claim that they are propane and butane. All the company says is that the propellants are food grade and have been approved by the FDA. However, when heated, these propellants can become explosive.

Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 529 U.S. 861; 98-1811 (2000)

• 2000
• Category: Personal injury; preemption