Law Topics >  Cause of Injuries > Defective & Dangerous Products

The phrase "products liability" is used to describe situations in which a person or property is injured or damaged in some way due to a defective product or service. Products liability is not a legal theory like strict liability, negligence, or intentional torts, rather the phrase simply means that the supplier, manufacturer, seller, or provider of a product or service may be liable for any injury or damage caused by such product or service. There are generally two types of defective products, those with defective designs and those that are manufactured improperly.

Design defects occur when the engineering process used by a company to design a product is faulty, resulting in a product that is unnecessarily dangerous. With a design defect, all of the items that come off a company's assembly line have the same defect.

On the other hand, a manufacturing defect occurs when a product is not manufactured as designed. While there is nothing wrong with the product's overall design, the manner in which it is assembled is flawed. With a manufacturing defect, the problem is usually not common to all of the items which roll off the company's assembly line, but rather with only a few.