Product Liability: When a Defective Product Causes Injury

Product liability holds manufacturers, distributors, and sellers responsible when a defective product causes injury. Unlike most personal injury claims, it doesn't always require proving negligence — in many cases, showing the product was defective and that the defect caused the injury is enough.

Three types of defects

A manufacturing defect happens during production — the specific product that caused harm differs from how it was designed, like a contaminated batch. A design defect means the entire product line is unreasonably dangerous even when made exactly as intended, requiring a showing that a safer, practical alternative design existed. A marketing or warning defect means the product itself was fine, but it lacked adequate instructions or warnings about a non-obvious risk.

Who can be liable

Liability can reach anyone in the distribution chain: the manufacturer of the finished product, a component manufacturer whose defective part caused the failure, a distributor, and the retailer who sold it — Florida law allows claims against sellers in the chain of distribution, not just the original maker, though the ultimate financial responsibility often gets allocated back up the chain in practice.

Strict liability vs. negligence

Florida recognizes strict product liability, meaning a plaintiff generally doesn't have to prove the manufacturer was careless — just that the product was defective, the defect existed when it left the defendant's control, and it caused the injury while the product was being used as intended or in a reasonably foreseeable way. This is a meaningfully lower bar than ordinary negligence, which is part of why correctly identifying a case as a product liability claim, rather than general negligence, matters.