Product Liability
No. Product liability in Texas is strict liability — you prove the product was defective and that the defect caused the injury, not that anyone was negligent. The claim reaches the manufacturer, and can reach the seller in defined circumstances. The deadline is two years, with a fifteen-year outside limit from the date of sale.
A manufacturing defect means this particular unit came off the line wrong — it differs from the design and from its siblings. These are the most straightforward to prove, because the comparison is against the maker’s own specification.
A design defect means the whole line is unreasonably dangerous as designed. Texas requires proof of a safer alternative design that was economically and technologically feasible when the product left the maker, and that would have prevented or significantly reduced the injury without substantially impairing the product’s utility.
A marketing defect is a failure to warn or to give adequate instructions about a risk that is not obvious. The question is whether an adequate warning would have changed what happened.
The manufacturer is the primary defendant, and strict liability reaches everyone in the chain of distribution in principle.
In practice Texas gives non-manufacturing sellers a broad statutory shield. A retailer is generally not liable unless it participated in the design, altered the product, knew of the defect, made its own express representation about it, or the manufacturer is insolvent or beyond the court’s reach.
That last exception matters more than it sounds. Where the manufacturer is overseas and cannot practically be brought before a Texas court, the seller can come back into the case.
Separate from the two-year limitations period, Texas has a statute of repose: most product claims are barred fifteen years after the product was sold, regardless of when the injury occurred.
There are exceptions — among them products the maker warranted for a longer useful life, and certain latent-disease claims — but the default is hard. An injury from a twenty-year-old machine is frequently barred before it happens.
This is why the date of sale is one of the first facts to establish, ahead of almost anything about the injury itself.
Whatever hurt you must be preserved exactly as it is. Do not return it to the seller, do not send it back to the manufacturer for inspection or replacement, and do not let anyone repair it.
Keep the packaging, the manual, the receipt and the model and lot numbers, and photograph the scene before anything is cleared. Where a fire or explosion is involved, the debris field is evidence too.
An engineer will need to examine the item itself. A claim about a product nobody can inspect is very hard to bring, and returning it under warranty is the single most common way that happens.
Keep the product, unrepaired and unaltered, along with everything that came with it.
Photograph the product, the injury and the scene, and note the model, serial and lot numbers.
Find the purchase date and proof of it. The fifteen-year repose period runs from the sale.
Check whether a recall exists, and report the incident to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Do not treat a recall notice as a reason to send the item back.
No. Texas product claims are strict liability: you prove the product was defective and that the defect caused the injury.
Usually not. Texas shields non-manufacturing sellers unless they altered the product, knew of the defect, made their own representation about it, or the manufacturer cannot be reached — for example an insolvent or foreign maker.
No. The product is the evidence. Returning it is the most common way a provable claim becomes unprovable.
Two years from the injury, and generally no claim at all more than fifteen years after the product was sold.
A recall is useful evidence but not a substitute for proof, and it does not extend the deadlines. Keep the item rather than returning it.
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