If you were injured or lost a loved one due to an unsafe or defective product, you might qualify for compensation to cover your losses. A Leesville product liability lawyer from Laborde Earles Injury Lawyers can help you recover a financial award from the product’s manufacturer or another liable party.
Our personal injury lawyers can begin investigating your case, collecting evidence, identifying the liable party(s), and pursuing compensation on your behalf. We pledge to do everything we can to get the justice you deserve.
How A Product Liability Lawyer Can Help You
The period after an injury caused by a defective or dangerous product can be incredibly stressful. If you are dealing with pain and a long-lasting healing process, you might be overwhelmed with having to pursue compensation for medical care and other losses you’ve suffered due to no fault of your own.
Indeed, compensation recovery will require you to complete numerous tasks within strict deadlines, and you may not even know where to begin. Fortunately, you don’t have to navigate the complex claims processes alone. In fact, a Leesville product liability lawyer can complete many of these tasks for you.
A Laborde Earles product liability attorney can help you in the following ways and more:
Being Your Go-To Legal Expert and Advisor
To pursue a product liability claim, you will have to familiarize yourself with your rights, Louisiana laws, and other aspects of building and putting together a compensation claim. A lawyer who specializes in product liability is the perfect advisor to have on hand to teach you what you need to know and guide you through the process.
They will also make sure any paperwork is correctly filled out and submitted and that you don’t miss any critical deadlines. According to Louisiana CC Art. 3492 and 2315.2, you only have one year to file a product liability personal injury lawsuit or wrongful death lawsuit.
Being Your Confidante and Medical Advocate
A Laborde Earles lawyer is not just a legal expert but also a friend and supporter in your time of need. Likewise, a lawyer will be familiar with certain aspects of medical practice, so they can ensure you are receiving the best care.
Investigating Your Case and Gathering Evidence
Each case is unique, and details are important. As such, a product liability lawyer will thoroughly investigate the circumstances of your case. Any successful compensation claim must be entirely grounded in evidence. Moreover, you must prove that the other party is liable and that you incurred damages. A product liability lawyer will know what evidence to gather and how to use it to construct a solid claim.
Evidence your attorney can collect to help you build your case includes:
- Police reports
- Manufacturer reports regarding the safety of the product
- Medical bills to prove injury-related damages
- Medical records to prove the extent of your injuries
- Photos and videos from the scene of the incident
- Surveillance footage that captured the incident as it happened
- Photos of property damage
- Eyewitness statements
- Testimony from expert witnesses, such as police officers, doctors, emergency first responders, accident reconstructionists, economists, engineers, psychologists, etc.
Calculate All Your Damages and Help You Build a Claim
With evidence such as receipts, bills, pay stubs, and expert witness testimony, your lawyer can fully calculate your past, present, and future economic damages. However, at Laborde Earles, we understand not all losses are financial. Some are non-economic, take a personal toll, and are harder to quantify. For non-economic damages, your lawyer will apply legal formulas in conjunction with expert testimony to calculate an amount equal to what you deserve.
Negotiate With Insurance Companies
After you’ve built your compensation claim, you will submit it to the other party’s insurer and try to reach a fair settlement out of court. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always go smoothly. Insurers are motivated by profits, so they will try to compensate you for as little as possible by employing underhanded tactics to discredit your claim. A lawyer knows how to avoid these tactics and will ensure your claim is taken seriously.
Represent You in Court
Sometimes negotiations with the insurer won’t end in a settlement agreement. If this happens to you, a lawyer will file a lawsuit against them and fight in court to get you the compensation you deserve.
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Damages Available in a Leesville Product Liability Claim
You may be entitled to a variety of damages, depending on the unique circumstances surrounding your injury. These can be both economic and non-economic and may include the following:
- Medical bills, including ambulance fees, emergency care, hospital stays, doctor visits, physical therapy, medications, etc.
- Other injury-related costs, such as making your home handicap-accessible
- Lost wages from missing work while injured
- Reduced future earning capacity due to disability
- Property damage repair or replacement fees, such as for the defective product itself or anything it damaged
- Physical pain and suffering
- Emotional anguish
- Diminished quality and enjoyment of life
- Permanent or long-term disability
- Scarring and disfigurement
- Wrongful death damages, such as funeral and burial costs, lost income and benefits, and lost love and guidance
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Determining Liability in a Product Liability Case
Most products change hands multiple times before they reach the consumer. A product could be dangerous or defective in its design. Conversely, a product could be altered or damaged, making it hazardous before the consumer has it in their possession. Depending on the nature and origin of the dangerous defect, one of the following parties could be liable:
- Designer
- Manufacturer(s)
- Packaging, shipping, or delivery company
- Distributor
- Wholesaler
- Retail store
- Maintenance company
- Safety inspector
- Marketing company
In some cases, standard liability applies, and you’d have to prove one of these parties was negligent, which led to your injuries. However, in Louisiana, product manufacturers are often under strict liability, which means they are liable for any damages their products cause.
If a company or manufacturer is under strict liability, you don’t have to prove negligence. As long as you used it as intended, you only need prove one of the following conditions existed before the product left the manufacturer’s control:
- The product was unreasonably dangerous in construction, composition, or design.
- The product lacked appropriate safety and warning documentation.
- The product fails to conform to the manufacturer’s express warranty.
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Legal Options for Pursuing Product Liability Claims
To pursue compensation against a manufacturer or other liable party for injuries caused by a dangerous or defective product, you will generally have two options:
- Personal injury claims and lawsuits: These involve a single party or claimant pursuing compensation for an injury against a liable party.
- Class action lawsuits: Also known as mass torts, these involve multiple parties (sometimes thousands), all pursuing compensation for the same or similar reasons/injuries. Class actions allow the court system to handle one large case instead of many smaller ones.
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Connect With Us Today for Your Free Consultation
With over 250 years of combined experience in personal injury and product liability law, our lawyers have experience with cases like yours. They know how to deal with the insurance company and what product liability lawsuits entail. Over the years, our lawyers have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for our clients.
If a defective or dangerous product injured you or a loved one, connect with us at Laborde Earles Injury Lawyers. One of our product liability lawyers in Leesville can help you identify and assess your damages, determine the responsible party, establish their liability, and secure your compensation. Contact Laborde Earles Injury Lawyers today, and we can tell you more during your free, confidential consultation.
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