Personal Injury and Product Liability Lawyers Often Get a Bad Rap but In Truth the Threat of Litigation Makes Them Unsung Heroes Insuring Vehicle and Product Safety
When I was interviewed for membership to a posh and exclusive social club recently, one of the older and stalwart members on the Admissions Committee asked me why I would perform a job as distasteful as being a personal injury and product liability lawyer. Of course, what comes to mind is the shocking McDonald’s hot coffee case of many years ago and the many seemingly excessive verdicts that often are unrelated to the reality of the situation that seem to have tremendous shock value to the normal layperson. What the press and these individuals fail to recognize is that personal injury and product liability lawyers have a long history of protecting consumers from unsafe products. The threat of litigation and large verdicts serves as an insurance policy against the manufacturers when defective products are fixed or recalled from the market. While punitive damages often seem to make headlines, what many fail to recognize is that they are mostly later reduced substantially, sometimes by consent of the parties.
The recent Toyota situation indicates that when Toyota was still trying to blame floor mats for its runaway cars, the government and legal intervention by product liability lawyers put the issue under a microscope and exposed other potential fixes. Without the threat of litigation and the extensive discovery procedures that accompany the same, consumers would be left at the mercy of product manufacturers and auto manufacturers who would continue to produce red herrings indicating why their products were safe for normal use despite the multitude of catastrophic injuries and wrongful deaths.
