The Warrantee Law for Defective Products

Have you been injured by using a product? There’s someone to compensate you
By: Ofer Soler, Attorney

In the advanced society in which we live, there is almost constant use of manmade products beginning from the beds we sleep in at night, to the alarm clock that wakes us up in the morning, the cosmetics products we use, electrical appliances, and other various products and appliances.

A large percentage of products possess inherent risks to their users due to some defect, and occasionally we hear about televisions that exploded in front of their viewers, food products that contained harmful ingredients or toys that injured the children playing with them.

In the early 1980s in Israel, legislation was passed on a law titled the Warrantee Law for Defective Products. This law makes it significantly easier for people who have been bodily harmed by defective products to receive compensation for their injuries.

According to this law, any person that was bodily harmed by a defective product is entitled to receive compensation from the manufacturer or importer of that product, without being required to prove that the manufacturer or importer was guilty or negligent. Meaning, the damage itself warrants compensation (unlike the need to prove damage-causing negligence in “normal” damage law suits, such as medical malpractice law suits).

What is a defective product according to the legal definition? A defective product is a product that may cause bodily harm due to a defect or the lack of appropriate warnings and directions for use. The law even claims that a product should be assumed defective if the circumstances of the case at hand are more likely due to the fact that the product was defective rather than intact.

Let us take, for example, a consumer who purchases hair dye for home use. The consumer reads the directions on the hair dye’s enclosed instructional pamphlet, and over the course of her using the product her head is burned because the directions did not indicate that the dye is not to be left in for more than a certain amount of minutes. Seemingly, this is a case of a defective product and the injured woman is entitled to compensation from the manufacturer or importer of the product.

The aforementioned law contains protective measures that a manufacturer or importer may use in order to protect themselves from law suits. For example, a manufacturer may prove that the damage-causing defect happened to the product after the product had left his authority and that the product had passed reasonable safety tests. Another possible defense for a manufacturer may be the claim that at the time that the product left his control, he could not have known that the product was unsafe due to the level of technological development at that time.

In actuality, the rulings of courts of law have greatly reduced the amount of defenses for manufacturers in order to enable those injured by defective products to receive compensation. The wording of the law also maintains that the manufacturer cannot place the blame back on the injured person by claiming that the injured person was negligent in their use of the product in a manner that caused injury.

For example, if a consumer who purchased an electrical appliance did not turn off the appliance after he or she finished using it (and the instructions did not indicate the need to turn of the appliance), and as a result was electrocuted or otherwise injured, the consumer is still entitled to compensation for his injury even if he was negligent in not turning off the appliance.

Due to the “ease” by which one can receive compensation according to this law, the amounts of monetary compensation are limited by legislation. As such the sum one can receive due to “pain and suffering,” bodily harm, or loss of income are limited. The statute of limitations for law suits under this legislation is three years alone, and after the passing of three years claims for damages can still be made but only under another law with a longer statute of limitations.

Due to the ease in which one can receive compensation according to this law, in any event of bodily harm it is worth examining whether a product was involved in the injury and whether a claim can be made according to the Warrantee Law for Defective Products.

You can raise questions regarding this subject on our website’s Investigation Forum and legal consultation section. The forum is managed by experienced private investigators and expert attorneys who will make every effort to assist inquirers and answer their questions.

This list is intended to provide general and initial information, and is not intended to provide or substitute legal consultation. The facts mentioned are true as of the date of their publication and may change at any time.

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