Product liability for harmful products

Harmful products

029 2267 5940

Overview

Have you been harmed by a product?

a medical device that has gone wrong?
an unexpected side effect from your medication?
a beauty product that has caused an unexpected reaction or purchased a faulty product which caused you or your family harm?

In the eyes of the law if the product did not produce the level of safety you would have expected then it may be considered defective and you may be able to be compensated for the injuries or losses that follow.

Our harmful products experience

Our team has many years experience of successfully winning harmful product claims.

Our expert advice has helped us to be ranked first as a representative of claimants in such cases by Chambers and Partners, the independent guide to Law firms.

Compensation has been recovered for many victims of harmful products such as ordinary household products as well as medical and pharmaceutical devices.

Most recently the firm:

negotiated a settlement protocol for patients who alleged visual problems from their cataract remedial intraocular lenses;
represents the victims of the South Wales E-Coli outbreak;
obtained compensation for one individual who complained of a defective hip prosthesis; and
obtained compensation for one individual who suffered injury from a piece of aircraft furniture in a First Class cabin.

Our personal injury lawyers

assist some of the 700,000 or so people who are injured each year and wish to seek compensation for their losses – and we can assist those who have been injured and who could claim but feel unable to;
investigate each potential claim thoroughly and offer early and ongoing assessments as to the prospects of success in your claim and the likely level of compensation and other remedies you may be entitled to;
help clients who have suffered relatively minor injuries and those who have had the misfortune to suffer catastrophic and life-changing injuries;
work to the highest service standards so that we conclude your case as quickly as possible with the right remedy; and
work on conditional fee agreements (no win, no fee) so that if we don’t win your case there is no bill to pay.

Many of our solicitors have national reputations as leaders in their fields. We count amongst us Deputy District Judges, Recorders, Queens Counsel, Solicitors Regulation Authority specialist panel members, Fellows of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL), members of Action for the Victims of Medical Accidents, published authors of legal texts, frequent contributors of legal journal articles and some of the country’s most renowned trainers of other lawyers on all aspects of personal injury law.

Key contact

Mark Harvey

Partner, Head of Specialist Personal Injury

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Mark Harvey is a Partner in the claimant division. He has obtained compensation for many individual victims of common but defective consumer products as well as victims of accidents overseas and arising out of travel generally.

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Case studies

Claimant awarded £18,000 as a result of a delay in performing hip replacement surgery.

Claimant awarded £45,000 on behalf of his late wife for a failure to diagnose metastatic cancer.

Your questions answered

What you need to prove

In order for your harmful product compensation claim to be successful you, as the claimant, will need to establish that the product was defective and that this caused you an injury that you would not have otherwise have suffered.

In other words, you will need to prove that the manufacturer or supplier was liable for the defect in the product and that this caused you injury. We can help you achieve this outcome.

Consumer Protection Act

The Consumer Protection Act 1987 (CPA) applies to any products supplied by manufacturers after the 1 March 1988 and it provides that where any damage is caused "wholly or partly by a defect in the product" the manufacturer and/or supplier will be liable for the damage caused which includes personal injury. The Act imposes a strict liability on the manufacturer/supplier.

Under the CPA it must be proved that the product was defective; that is "the safety of the product was not such as persons generally are entitled to expect".

Once we have proved that the product was defective we will need to prove that the defect in the product caused the damage. This can only be proved on the basis of medical evidence.

Common Law Negligence

Under the common law of negligence it must be established that there was a defect with the product and that there was a duty on the manufacturer to take reasonable care to ensure that it would not cause damage and there has been a breach of that duty by the manufacturer because it was reasonably foreseeable at the time that the product was supplied that injury was likely to occur.

Unlike a claim under the Consumer Protection Act where the onus is on the defendant to show that the defect could not have been identified at the time of supply, under the common law of negligence, the onus is on the claimant to prove that it was reasonably foreseeable to the defendant at the time of supply that the product was defective and would cause injury. This claim is more difficult but may be necessary if the product complained if is more than ten years old.

The Limitation Act provides that the claim must be brought within three years of the date of knowledge that the product was defective and had caused a significant injury.

Harmful product group action case studies

Hugh James negotiated a settlement protocol which avoided litigation, on behalf of the victims of a defective intraocular replacement lens.

The protocol involved check-ups and remedial treatment for the victims, payment of their expenses and compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused, with the result that expensive and lengthy litigation was avoided whilst providing a real remedy over and above the payment of compensation. Cataract Lenses

"Thousands of patients having hip or knee replacements on the NHS may find that their new joints do not last more than a few years."
The Times

A study of joint replacements in England has found that the latest surgical techniques of hip resurfacing and partial knee replacement have a lower success rate than the older established methods where the entire joint is replaced.

The researchers on behalf of The Royal College of Surgeons found that the newer surgical joints could be twice as likely to fail than standard ones. Where for example in a total hip replacement the failure rate is said to be 1 in 111 patients, in the more modern surgery where one fits a cap over the head of the thigh bone connecting to a socket rather than a full hip replacement, the failure rate accelerates to 1 in 38 cases.
'Quick-fit' knees and hips that can wear out in three years