Having joint replacement surgery is costly and painful. Product liability lawyers can help sort out who is at fault if the device doesn’t work as it should.
Medical devices such as a hip or knee replacements are supposed to make your life better. However, there are times when the product doesn’t work as it should. Product liability lawyers can help you recover any damages due to problems caused by these devices.
Manufacturers of these devices work hard to ensure they properly work, and that users are warned about any potential dangers. If these items continually malfunction, the manufacturer would be out of business.
However, there are three ways that these products can still go wrong. The product could have had a defect during manufacturing, there are inadequate warnings or instructions about use, or the design itself is defective.
Defect During Manufacturing
A defect during manufacturing means that a product was improperly created or was damaged afterwards. Even manufacturers with great reputations may find themselves with an error at their facility, which can affect certain batches. This is why you may have seen recalls on certain brands with specific codes. However, sometimes the manufacturing facility isn’t to blame. Instead, it is how the shipping department crated and shipped the device which damaged it. A product defect can occur at any time from the factory to reception of the device at the doctor’s office.
Insufficient Warnings
All medical implant devices come with some warning about their usage. This comes from rigid testing of the device before being sold on the open market. However, some, less scrupulous manufacturers, conceal problems they have discovered with their devices. Instead of listing all the warnings, they neglect to tell doctors and patients that use of the device under certain conditions can cause the device to fail. This neglect makes the company liable. Product liability lawyers will need to interview your doctor and his staff in order to determine if all warnings were made available. Often, the patient does not see the defective marketing because it is aimed at the medical professionals, not the public.
Defective Design
Sometimes, a product’s design may seem revolutionary, but in reality, it does not work the way it should. While you may think that these flaws would be caught during testing, it’s not always the case and failed designs make their way to the market. In some cases, the manufacturer knew about the flaws and deliberately concealed the problems in order to continue making money off the parts. With the right product liability lawyers, these injuries are actionable.
