Blitz USA…the innocent victim of unwarranted litigation?
Big businesses love to complain about trial lawyers and how we’re supposedly driving the cost up on everything from health care to gas cans. People don’t often get to see the truth behind these stories. Big businesses love to make themselves out to be the victim. Often the truth is just the opposite. In the Blitz USA gas can cases, there is evidence that Blitz USA knew that safer designs were readily available and would cost less than one dollar ($1) to implement. Yet they made a business decision not to use the safer design in their products. Needless to say, 75 of their customers were horribly burned…many of them children.
I say if a manufacturer makes a conscious decision to save a few dollars at the expense of someone’s health or safety, when someone gets hurt they need to take some responsibility and stop trying to play the victim card.
If you are going to take a gamble on betting it will be cheaper to forego safety features on your product and just pay off the people who you know are going to be killed or horribly burned using it, don’t complain when you get actually get sued and a trial lawyer forces you to take some responsibility for your poor decision.
If you are going to play with fire…expect to get burned.
Please see the link below for an interesting read about the Blitz gas can litigation from the American Association for Justice…
http://www.letamericaknow.com/resources/LAK.GasCan.073012.pdf