Personal injuries in Texas caused by product defects occur too often. San Antonio personal injury lawyers with experience in product defect cases have kept all of us safer by holding manufacturers accountable. Product liability lawsuits have become an increasingly important means of keeping consumers safe.
Case in Point: the current Toyota Motor Corp. recalls highlight a corporation’s attempts to deny, hide, and obfuscate the seriousness of the product defects. It has now become apparent that numerous car models over a number of years had issues with sudden acceleration and the car owner complaints were either minimized or explained away. Some news agencies have reported that there were over 2600 complaints of sudden acceleration in a 10 year period and that approximately 5 years ago Toyota started to attribute the problem to its software and not the floor mats. Manufacturers cannot be relied upon to assure our safety and the regulatory agencies have clearly shown that they cannot stay abreast of all the serious defects in the marketplace.
Regulation is crucial to maintaining some base level of safety for products placed into the stream of commerce; however, Federal and State Regulators do not have the resources, staff or expertise to monitor all of the various products sold in the United States. Regulation of corporations has never been enough and the laissez-faire policies of the Bush Administration only further weakened regulatory agencies by cutting their budgets and staff. As we have written about previously, agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) , the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are all overwhelmed by their workload and budget constraints.
We will have to rely upon Texas personal injury lawyers and Texas product defect lawyers to police the safety of products sold in the United States; unless we are willing to increase our taxes to greatly increase the funding for the Federal regulatory agencies. Product liability lawsuits have played a dominant role in making products safer. Many manufacturers have been compelled to redesign their products to make them safer for consumers. An added benefit of product liability lawsuits is that the party that caused the injury is held accountable so that the huge costs of catastrophic injuries are not passed on to the public at large.
