Articles Posted in Products Liability

More than 70 people have joined together to sue ConAgra Foods for personal injury. ConAgra is the packaged food company that produces some of the jars of Peter Pan Peanut Butter and Great Value Peanut Butter. Other individual lawsuits are also pending.

ConAgra has agreed to a recall of the jars of peanut butter, but says that the connection between its products and a salmonella outbreak in its peanut butter jars has not been proven.

The Food and Drug Administration is telling anyone who has a jar of Great Value (product code 2111) or Peter Pan peanut butter that has been purchased anytime since October 2004 to throw the peanut butter out.

Only one plant in Georgia is said to have been the cause of the salmonella-infected peanut butter jars. ConAgra is asking people who throw out their jars of peanut butter to keep the lids for a full refund.

Every year, about 50,000 salmonella infection cases are reported, with 600 people dying from salmonella poisoning. Children are especially susceptible to the illness because of their underdeveloped immune system, and kids ages 4 and under make up 30% of reported salmonella incidents.

A foodborne sickness that comes from the salmonella bacteria in animals, salmonella infection can be transmitted in water, soil, raw meats, eggs, and animal feces. Vomiting, fever, headaches, abdominal cramps, diarrhea (sometimes with blood), and other symptoms can occur in kids with salmonella if they aren’t treated. Later symptoms can include a “rose spotted” skin rash, an enlarged liver or spleen, and a stronger chance of becoming ill with pneumonia or meningitis.

If you have been injured or become ill because of a manufactured product, you may be able to file a products liability claim. A manufacturer, producer, or seller can be held liable in a product liability lawsuit for placing a defective or dangerous product into the marketplace and making available it available to consumers.

In products liability claims, products can refer to many kinds of products, including:
• Food
• Medical tools
• Construction tools
• Machines
• Medicines
• Weapons
• Toys
• Trucks
• Cars
• Bicycles
• Clothes
• Toxic substances
• Household appliances
• Household products
• Motorcycles

Legal grounds for filing a product liability claim after someone has been injured or killed because of a dangerous product can include:

• Negligence in design, manufacturing, testing, or marketing
• Breach of warranty if seller did not uphold their warranty guarantee
• Misrepresentation that a product is other than what it is or less dangerous than it is—resulting in injury or death by consumers
• Strict liability, holding the manufacturer or the seller liable for the injuries caused by the product defect

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In one of the many thousands of products liability Vioxx-related lawsuits that have been brought against Merck and Co., a Texas judge upheld a ruling that held the pharmaceutical company responsible for the death of Leonel Garza.

Garza died in 2001 from a heart attack believed to have been caused by taking Vioxx. Last April, a jury ruled that Merck was liable and awarded Garza’s family $32 million in damages. Judge Alex Gabert, however, said that the award amount violated Texas’s strict limit on compensatory and punitive damages. He reduced the damage amount to $8.7 million.

Merck plans to ask for a new trial because of information revealing that there had been a financial relationship between Felicia Garza, Leonel’s widow, and one of the jury members responsible for the original verdict.

The victory is good news for other Vioxx plaintiffs because it showed that a court had agreed that even short-term use of Vioxx can lead to severe side effects. More than 27,000 lawsuits have been filed against Merck. A New Orleans federal judge, however, said plaintiffs could not file a class action lawsuit and that each case had to be filed separately. Merck has won most of its cases thus far.

The pharmaceutical company had pulled the drug from the shelf in 2004 after a study revealed that long-term use of the drug can double a patient’s risk of a coronary event.

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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says that defective products cause more than 29.5 million injuries and close to 22,000 deaths in the US each year.

Some reasons for why a manufactured product might be defective:

– design defects