Product liability trial lawyer
Los Angeles · Santa Fe
When a product is designed, built or sold without adequate regard for the people who will use it, and someone is catastrophically hurt, the law lets that person hold the manufacturer and everyone in the chain of distribution responsible. These are the cases Tobin Lanzetta has concentrated on for most of his career, and the reason The Best Lawyers in America® has listed him for plaintiffs’ product liability litigation every year since 2020.
What we take
We handle a small number of product cases at a time, generally involving a death or a permanent injury, and generally against a manufacturer with the resources to fight. Recent and representative matters include a spinal cord injury caused by the design of a passenger vehicle, resolved against the manufacturer on confidential terms, and a $3.5 million Ventura County jury verdict for a worker catastrophically injured by a forklift. Categories we see most often: passenger vehicles, buses and their components (roof crush, seat and restraint failures, fuel systems, airbags); forklifts, cranes, loaders, presses and other industrial machinery; power tools, ladders and protective equipment; and products that fail because a guard, interlock or warning was left out.
Each case is different. Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome.
How California law works
California was the first state to hold manufacturers strictly liable for defective products, in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57. You do not have to prove the manufacturer was careless; you have to prove the product was defective, that you used it in a way the manufacturer should have anticipated, and that the defect was a substantial factor in causing your injury. The same rule reaches the distributor and the retailer.
A product can be defective in three ways. A manufacturing defect means the particular unit came off the line different from, and more dangerous than, its own design. A design defect means the design itself is unsafe. California judges design defects under two tests set out in Barker v. Lull Engineering Co. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 413: a product is defective if it fails to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect, or if the risks of its design outweigh its benefits. Under the second test, once you show the design caused the injury, the burden shifts to the manufacturer to justify the design. A warning defect means the product carried inadequate instructions or warnings about a danger the manufacturer knew or should have known about.
Why these cases need a trial lawyer
Manufacturers do not settle product cases because a demand letter is well written. They settle, when they settle, because the case has been worked up by engineers and medical experts, the design history has been pulled out of discovery, and the plaintiff’s lawyer has tried cases like it before. We prepare every product case as though it will be tried, and we say so to the other side early.
If you have been hurt by a product
Keep the product, its packaging and its manual exactly as they are. Do not return it, repair it or let anyone else take it. Photograph it and the scene. Get medical care and keep every record. Then call us. California generally allows two years from the injury to file suit (Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1), but evidence disappears much faster than that.
Free consultation
Consultations are free and confidential. We represent product liability clients on a contingency fee: no attorney’s fee unless we recover for you. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for the costs we advance; a court may in some cases award costs to the opposing side. Offices in Los Angeles and Santa Fe; licensed in California and New Mexico.