Few people, except perhaps new parents considering nursery furniture, consistently consider the potential danger of poorly designed or manufactured furniture when they make a purchase. However, the reality is furniture can cause injuries or even death. Here at Harris & Harris Injury Lawyers, we have a team of Las Vegas product liability attorneys that know the dangers that manufactured furniture pose.
Some furniture suffers from poor design. Although the piece of furniture was made correctly according to specifications, the way it was designed renders it defective. In these situations, you can see defects across the entire product line.
When chairs have design defects, the manufacturer will often recall the entire line of furniture to prevent others from being injured.
Sometimes, there is nothing wrong with the design, but because of how it was put together, the particular piece of furniture is defective. For example, materials used might have a weakness which causes a chair to collapse, or the joints might not have been joined securely. Fortunately, furniture with manufacturing defects should be available for your lawyer to look at to find the defect. Generally, when there is a manufacturing defect not all of the furniture in the product line will be defective.
Dangerous furniture poses a risk for injury to anyone who may use it, but children are particularly vulnerable because they tend to climb up on furniture or use it to pull themselves to a standing position. Two-thirds of furniture and television tip-over fatalities are toddlers.
Common furniture accident injuries to babies and children include concussions and traumatic brain injuries, damage to the neck and spine, fractures and crushed bones, and suffocation.
Common injuries for victims of all ages include:
To show that a defective piece of furniture was unreasonably dangerous and that it caused your injuries, you should begin building your case. In addition to holding onto your medical records, you should briefly write down how you were using the piece of furniture. For example, when it collapsed, were you sitting on a chair like a normal person? Or were you trying to do something different, like balancing on it while doing a handstand?
Compensation cannot be received if you were injured while using the chair in a manner that wasn’t intended. You also cannot have altered the chair in a way that made it more dangerous.
After reviewing your case, a lawyer might decide that you need an expert witness to help you. To explain to a jury how a particular design was defective or how a particular piece of furniture was manufactured in a defective manner, you need an expert.
A Harris & Harris personal injury lawsuit attorney have worked with expert witnesses in many product liability cases, so we know how to find ones with the right combination of expertise and ease communicating.
Furniture accidents are more common than you might think. Liability for damages caused by defective or malfunctioning furniture goes to anyone in the chain of distribution, including designers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers. Such damages may include but are not limited to medical costs, loss of income, and pain and suffering.
If you or a loved one have been injured, you should take action:
Furniture should support you, not send you falling to the ground or topple over and crush you.
Nevada courts allow injured victims to receive compensation. Contact Harris & Harris Injury Lawyers today at (702) 384-1414. Initial consultations are free.