Defective Vehicle Attorneys in Georgia

Defective auto products are a “silent killer” in Georgia. On average, 300,000 accidents happen in Georgia every year, requiring the assistance of a
defective automobile attorney
. In many cases, these accidents are caused by defective or poorly serviced vehicles or vehicle equipment, including:
  • Defective brakes
  • Defective doors or door latches
  • Inadequate occupant containment systems that allow ejection of passengers or the driver
  • Exploding gas tanks due to the placement of the tank or other design defects
  • Malfunctioning airbags
  • Malfunctioning seat belts
  • Rollover or roof-crush accidents caused by a lack of stability control
  • Tread separation caused by a defective tire
  • Unintended Acceleration defects

ACCIDENTS IN GEORGIA ARE NOT ALWAYS CAUSED BY DEFECTIVE AUTO PRODUCTS, BUT DEFECTIVE AUTO PRODUCTS OFTEN MAKE AN ACCIDENT WORSE

In many cases, accidents are caused by a negligent driver who may have been driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs or was looking at a cell phone. In these cases, the initial accident may have been caused by ordinary negligence, but a defective automotive product may have caused a normal accident to become a serious or fatal wreck. For example, a faulty seat belt may cause the driver of a vehicle to sustain a serious head injury, while the passenger walks away without a scratch. In many cases, the defect is not obvious due to the severity of the wreck or the type of injury sustained. The 

defective auto products lawyers

 At The Werner Law Firm, we have seen several wrecks where it was almost impossible to separate a pre-accident defective condition from collision damage. Fortunately, we work with top experts throughout the country who are skilled in accident reconstruction, biomechanics, kinesiology, product engineering, and/or human factors. These experts can help us find the real answers to what did and did not cause an accident in Georgia.

WHAT TYPES OF DEFECTIVE AUTO CASES DO WE ACCEPT?

The 

auto defect attorneys in Atlanta

The Werner Law Firm handles claims involving defective cars, trucks, and SUVs. These defects take many forms, but here are the most common that we see during our investigations of serious and fatal automobile wrecks:

Tire Failures
Defective tire claims take many forms depending on whether the defect arises from a design defect, manufacturing defect, poor service, or a combination of each. In Georgia alone, there are over 1,000 serious or fatal wrecks involving defective tires each year. As a firm, we have dedicated ourselves to representing individuals and families who have been injured in accidents involving defective tires. If you would like to learn more about our tire failure practice, you can click here.

Defective Seats
Defective seat belt cases generally fall into two categories. The first is where the seat belt fails completely, and the occupant is thrown from the vehicle or otherwise seriously injured when he or she leaves the seat containment area. The second is where the seat belt fails to adequately restrain the occupant and he or she violently strikes the steering wheel, windshield, or even other occupants. Defective seat belt cases are extremely difficult for an average person or attorney to identify. Spooling systems, torsion bars, latch plates, and webbing designs vary from vehicle to vehicle, and it takes a highly experienced eye to identify problems unique to each seat belt system.

Defective Seat Belts
Defective seat design cases where the stock seat (not a child seat) in a passenger car, truck, or SUV suddenly and unexpectedly collapses during a rear collision accident. The resulting collapse can be lethal to the seat occupant and any passengers in the back seat. Defective seat cases are generally identified when a single occupant sustains a severe head, neck, or back injury due to a seat inexplicably being in the down position. Defective seat design cases are often expert-intensive and require a careful teardown of the seat and its components.

SUV Rollover Accidents
SUV Rollover claims involve a defectively designed vehicle that is either unreasonably prone to rollover[2] (such as the Ford Explorer) or a vehicle that fails to provide adequate and economically feasible safeguards for occupants, such as electronic stability control. SUV rollover accidents typically involve a vehicle that has rolled over on a roadway without hitting a ditch or other obstacle. In many cases, an SUV rollover may be caused by a blown tire.

Defective Roof in a Car, Truck, Van, or SUV
If the roof is deformed in a rollover accident, it will often directly cause an injury or cause other safety systems to lose critical strength in protecting occupants. When the roof of a vehicle shows serious buckling, downward crevices, or is even completely flat, it is often caused by a defectively designed roof. Automobile manufacturers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting against increased roof crush standards while millions of victims from Georgia and other states suffer severe and permanent neck, spine, and head injuries in rollover accidents with defective roofs.

Defective Automobile Door Latch
Defective door latches cause or contribute to thousands of injuries every year. A defective door latch failure case is typically associated with an accident in which an occupant is fully or partially ejected from a vehicle during a rollover.

Defective Air Bag
A defective airbag case generally falls into one of two categories. The first is when a defective airbag fails to deploy during a serious accident. The second is when a vehicle lacks an airbag (such as a side-curtain airbag) that would have mitigated the severity of a wreck.

Fuel-fed Fire Cases
Fuel-fed fire cases are commonly caused by defectively designed vehicles with the fuel tank outside the frame (such as in many Jeep Grand Cherokees) or by defective fuel tank components that allow liquid fuel to escape from the vehicle, causing a fire or making an existing fire much worse.

WHAT TYPES OF CLAIMS DO WE BRING IN A DEFECTIVE AUTOMOBILE LAWSUIT?

The 

defective car lawyers in Georgia

The Werner Law Firm typically brings claims in one or more of the following three categories:

Design Defect Cases
A design defect case claims that a product was designed by the manufacturer in a way that creates an unreasonable danger and risks of harm to the user that outweigh the benefits of the chosen design. An example of a design defect claim against an automobile manufacturer is Chrysler’s failure to design a vehicle, such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee, with a fuel tank in a safe, contained area of the vehicle. Instead, Chrysler designed the Jeep Grand Cherokee with a tank in an area of the vehicle that it knew would make it susceptible to breaking and causing fires in the event of a collision.

Manufacturing Defect Cases
A manufacturing defect case often involves an act or omission during the manufacturing process that caused the product to fail when being used. A classic example of a manufacturing defect case is one in which a tire manufacturer used substandard practices in its plant, such as allowing debris to enter uncured tires, which causes the tire to separate during reasonably foreseeable use.

Failure to Warn Cases

A failure-to-warn case typically involves a claim that a product is dangerous because it lacks warnings, instructions, or labels that apprise the user of the product’s dangers or proper use. A common example of a failure-to-warn claim is where Ford failed to warn consumers of the likelihood that its vehicles, such as the Ford Escape and Ford Explorer, would rollover during reasonably foreseeable use.

Talk to a Georgia Defective Auto Products Attorney for Free
Call the attorneys at The Werner Law Firm for a free and 100% confidential consultation. When you call, we conduct a thorough investigation from every angle. If we accept your case, you will never pay us a dime unless and until we resolve it favorably.

In some cases, you may not need an attorney. If that is the case, we will let you know. We will give you honest and direct advice. We are committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, honesty, professionalism, and competence.

[1] http://www.dot.ga.gov/informationcenter/statistics/CrashData/Pages/DataTables.aspx

[2] NHTSA Docket No.: NHTSA-1999-5572; Notice 2, October 1, 2003, p. 4 of 17. (Rollovers which resulted in tow-away crashes.) The number of rollovers has increased over the last ten years. In 1993, statistics from NASS and FARS revealed that approximately 228,000 light vehicles were involved in rollovers each year. See e.g., Data Link, Injuring Contacts in Light Vehicle Rollovers, prepared for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Crashworthiness Staff (1993). See also Friedman and Friedman, Improved Vehicle Design for the Prevention of Severe Head & Neck Injuries to Restrained Occupants in Rollover Accident, United States Paper No. 96-S5-0-14, 16th ESV Conf. (1996).

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