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Product Liability
When a company manufactures and delivers a product, it has an implicit responsibility to see that the product is free of defects and/or materials that can potentially cause injury to the consumer. Should a defect become apparent, the company has an obligation to issue a recall; if a consumer has been injured in the course of using the product as intended, the company incurs product liability.
There is virtually no end to examples of product liability cases from all over the industrialized world. They range from defective automobile components to tainted pet and baby food to flammable children's clothing.
A particularly egregious form of product liability borders on criminal negligence, and even intent. The tobacco industry is an infamous example. Not only did cigarette manufacturers market a product known to be harmful to human health, they went so far as to modify the product in order to make it more addictive, and targeted advertising toward children knowing that those who begin smoking at a young age are much less likely to be able to quit later in life.
Another case involved a well-known auto manufacturer. One of the company's models was known to have a defect which caused the gasoline tank to explode during a side impact. With what has become a standard corporate mentality in the U.S. and abroad, the board of directors looked at the actuarial tables, estimated the potential cost of settling lawsuits and determined that it would be more profitable to simply pay the claims than correct the defect.
In both cases, corporations decided that profit margin and return on investment was more important than human life.
Sadly, courts in the U.S. are less inclined to punish such malfeasance (wrongdoing) today than they were thirty years ago.
In a product liability case, the plaintiff must only prove to the court that the product, when used according to instructions, caused the injury in question. The general procedure is to sue the manufacturer, but the seller and anyone else bearing responsibility can be named in the complaint or brought in by the defendant.