From: Plaintiff, 2025 December
In an age where design, manufacturing and service are often out-sourced, knowing the responsibilities of each party is crucial
Products-liability cases aren’t won with a dramatic closing argument or the “perfect” expert. They’re won in the quiet, early, sometimes frustrating initial months of litigation, when doing your foundational discovery, by demonstrating that the proper design or safety device would have prevented the injury. To do this, the plaintiff’s attorney must figure out exactly who was in charge of safety, what failed, why it failed, how it was designed and what safety devices could have prevented the injury.
If you handle these cases regularly, you already know the drill: Nothing is ever as simple as sthe defendant suggests, and everything is more complicated than your client imagined. Recently, I’ve noticed a shift in how manufacturers and third-party contractors attempt to create and then assert artificial layers of distance between themselves and their products to obscure their responsibility for defects. This artificial separation is often where the real battle may need to be fought.
The four corners of investigation
In complex product cases, the
order of operations matters more than
we admit. Too often, lawyers start with
the expert before they have the documents, or they try to piece together the failure mode without knowing the
design, or maintenance ecosystem surrounding the product. The better approach is to stabilize the case in four corners:
- Product design, safety devices, and manufacturing process
- Chain of distribution and possession (who owned, maintained, altered, or inspected the product)
- Failure timeline
- Specific regulatory duties, industry standards, or contractual obligations
Without those four corners, every later step becomes guesswork.
The problem no one talks about
In industrial equipment/machinery, medical devices, consumer goods, and even transmission failures, the same pattern repeats. Manufacturers often outsource design, manufacturing, and service/maintenance contracts to a contractor, who subcontracts to another contractor, who rotates engineers/technicians every six or so weeks. This distribution of responsibility is intentional. It’s not enough to identify the defect; plaintiffs’ attorneys have to locate the institutional knowledge of the defect and alternative safety devices, instructions or procedures. This information is almost never in the manual. It’s in the maintenance logs, in the subcontractor scope of work, and those internal communications.
Contract documents often establish the role of each entity and their duties
Remember, a good contract can be your road map for establishing liability. If the defendant agreed to be responsible for design, safety or some other aspect related to the production or “proactive maintenance,” “scheduled and unscheduled repairs,” or “facility safety compliance” of your product, your expert doesn’t have to work as hard to establish who is responsible and define the standard of care. The defendant’s contract has already done it for you.
In large, multi-party product cases, whether you’re dealing with a manufacturer, distributor, business owner, property owner and/or service provider, I’ve learned to treat the governing contracts as my road map of target defendants and duties and obligations. The contract will demonstrate to you what each defendant agreed their responsibilities would be long before anyone sits down for a deposition.
The use of experts
Plaintiffs’ attorneys tend to deploy experts too late. In complex product cases, it is important to retain your expert up front to help interpret the role of each entity and how their contractual obligations coincide with regulatory and industry standards. This must be done early to help frame your discovery requests and ensure you are getting proper responses to your discovery. An uninformed or ill-educated attorney is easily tricked into believing a limited response in discovery is somehow complete when it is not. What you do not know can actually hurt your case. Get the expert in early, but make sure their opinions are not finalized until you have:
- All contracts, regulatory standards, and industry standards
- All design and safety records
- The full-service history
- The pre- and post-incident complaints
- The third-party vendor documentation
This protects both the expert and the case. It ensures you are getting complete and accurate discovery responses. It allows your expert to have complete and accurate understanding of the case. It ensures you are able to take the most effective deposition of the defendant’s PMK representative.
The human story still wins the day
Even in a case built on contracts, schematics, failure modes, safety devices, or a disputed defect in a product that puts the owner or employer at odds with the manufacturer, jurors respond to the same basic truth: Any product that was supposed to protect or assist someone, but actually hurt them when used in a foreseeable way, must be defective. Behind all the technical noise, every case has a moment when you can clearly see how the product failed the person and caused their injury. When you can demonstrate that it was foreseeable and avoidable, then you have reached the heart of your case and the story to be told to the jury.
Complex product liability litigation is always about engineering and safety, but also about persistence. If you can establish the duties and from there keep asking each uncomfortable question as to who was responsible for assessing safety and avoiding exposure to the hazard that harmed the individual, you can usually find the missing pieces in your case.
