When making a claim for compensation where a person has been injured by a faulty or defective product, the key legislation that your solicitor will relate to is the Consumer Protection Act 1987.
This Act gives people the right to seek redress for death or injury caused by using defective consumer goods.
The Act also sets out a requirement that all goods for domestic use must be reasonably safe, bearing in mind all the circumstances and the way in which they are intended to be used.
If you have been injured by a faulty product and you were using the product as intended at the time of your accident, it is the Consumer Protection Act that gives you the right to make a compensation claim.
Before the introduction of the Act, and its extension in 1994 to cover all domestic consumer goods, the only way you could make a claim against a supplier for selling you a defective product was to use the Sale of Goods Act, which did not provide the same level of protection for consumers.
The Consumer Protection Act, on the other hand, gave anyone injured by a faulty or defective product the option to make a claim against either the supplier or the manufacturer, as long as the injury or damage caused by the defective product is valued at more than £275.
The definition of a defective product is one where the safety of the product is not up to the level that members of the public are entitled to expect.
However, anyone considering making a claim for faulty products compensation should be aware that just because a product is of poor overall quality, or its manufacturer subsequently makes a safer or superior version, it does not make it unsafe.
To be unsafe a product actually has to cause damage to property or injury to the person using it, even if they are using it as instructed.
When the courts consider a claim for faulty products compensation, they will also look at when the product was made, whether it came with any instructions or warnings and what it is intended to do.