If you have been injured due to a faulty or dangerous product, here is a little advice about how to get a claim started – i.e. what sorts of things you need that can help us lawyers assess a claim and start a claim.
Photos
Photos of the product are always extremely useful for us to have a look at – especially if they show the dangerous part that caused you an injury. It can also help us to better understand the mechanics of the product because not everyone knows what damp proofing membranes look like.
Receipts and Documentation / Packaging
All this is useful to allow us to assess what warnings or instructions for use come with the product. You would think that if you were using the product as it is intended to be used and you end up injured, something isn’t quite right. The receipt is also useful for proof of purchase too, and this is normally required by the other side when they start their investigations.
The Product – Keep it Safe!
The product may require inspection from the other side, so make sure you keep it (or the bits of it) safe to allow an inspection to take place. We can make an inspection secure and make sure that there is no funny business if we need to send off a product to a retailer or a manufacturer. We may instruct an independent expert to do an assessment.
Who is the claim against?
Now this is not always straightforward. As it happens, under the Supply of Goods and Services Act you can bring a claim against the supplier (i.e. the retailer) and they may have to deal with it. But if they are able to redirect to a UK manufacturer, then we may need to go against them. The point of the above Act is to make sure you can keep the claim in UK jurisdiction as it could prove difficult to sue a foreign company.
The other thing to note is that the retailer may pass you on to their supplier, and they may pass you on to another supplier – until we get to the manufacturer or the company that brought it to the UK. No one wants to pay out so they will all happily pass you off along the supply chain – just be prepared for that.
