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Product Liability Law in Southern Illinois

Sometimes accidents are caused by bad products. These products may have been negligently designed or manufactured. They may have not been put together properly or perhaps adequate warnings were not given to the user of the product. Bad products can lead to catastrophic injuries including death, broken bones, surgeries and amputations. These don’t simply arise to large industrial or construction equipment. A case may arise from a chair collapsing, bicycle handle parts not put on properly, or even certain medical devices or implants.

Products liability claims are very expensive to pursue and sometimes the injuries involved do not justify the expense of paying experts to prove the claims. Eric has experience in pursuit of these types of cases and can properly evaluate the claim and identify the responsible parties. When these products may have injured a lot of people, sometimes Class action or Mass Tort litigation may be involved. While we do not handle class actions or mass tort cases, we have been successful associating with a local firm that specializes in these types of claims. You might see advertisements on television seeking clients for injuries from medications or asbestos. Almost all of these firms are located hundreds or thousands of miles away and the claimant may never meet their lawyer. We refer our clients to local firms for these claims. The clients actually meet with the mass tort lawyer handling the claim. If you think you might have injuries from medications, faulty medical devices or asbestos, give us a call and we can meet with you with the lawyer we associate with for these claims.

Uninsured and underinsured coverage is coverage on you and anybody in your vehicle. It comes in to play when the driver at fault either doesn’t have coverage or doesn’t have enough coverage. In the past few years, more and more people have very low liability insurance limits. There are a lot of people with the state minimum coverage. We have seen people with catastrophic injuries caused by another person who has only minimal coverage. This is when the “underinsured” provision of your own policy kicks in but, in order to be effective, your underinsured limits need to exceed the liability coverage of the at fault driver (with certain exceptions) and you must get permission from your own carrier to accept the liability limit of the at fault driver. A claim is made and if a settlement cannot be reached then the matter goes to Arbitration.

Sometimes people don’t want to turn matters into their own insurance company but why not? It is coverage you pay for and, unlike your liability limit that provides coverage for another if you cause the accident.

I always advise people to buy as much under and uninsured coverage they can afford.

A person’s uninsured coverage comes into the picture when there is a collision and the other party is uninsured and when there is a “hit-and-run” accident and the driver that caused the accident cannot be found! Most insurance policies state that there must be proof of contact between vehicles.

Examples of other products cases include cases against an automotive company, a manufacturer of car seats for children, a manufacturer of folding chairs, the maker of a bicycle for faulty handle bars and various claims involving mining equipment.