Practical Concerns

Products liability actions are very expensive to prosecute. The strategy of many product manufacturers and sellers is to fight a “war of attrition.” They are aware that the resources of the Plaintiffs’ law firm that is footing the bill for each case are typically more limited than their own, and know that disparity will result in some claims never being filed.

The time involved in investigating the possibility a product defect exists can also be prohibitively expensive. The pool of qualified experts available to discuss any particular type of product defect is small, and in many instances, these experts are in a position to name their own price for working on your case, particularly if they have experience working for the specific manufacturer on the specific product at issue. A typical case going to trial involving vehicles or vehicle components, the costs of the expert witnesses alone ranges from $200,000 to $300,000.

It is not only the vehicle with the potential defect must be saved. All other vehicles involved in the crash must be similarly preserved, along with any trailers, boats, or campers that any of the accident vehicles may have been pulling. In addition, in many cases it is necessary to purchase an exemplar vehicle that your experts can inspect to learn what a component may have looked like before the crash, and it may even be necessary to perform destructive testing on the exemplar vehicle. This often gets very expensive; nevertheless, unless all of this evidence is preserved in the same condition it was in at the time of the accident, it may be impossible to later prove that the accident was caused by an automotive defect. All of these factors make it generally impracticable to pursue product defect cases in the absence of catastrophic injuries and significant economic losses to offset the costs.