Miami · Miami-Dade County

Miami Product Liability Lawyer

Something you bought failed, caught fire or came apart in your hands, and left an injury nobody warned you was possible. We can take it from here. Call 844-643-7200 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Miami personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Miami-Dade County since 1993.

Speak to a Lawyer How these cases work

Three theories Design, manufacturing, and failure to warn.

$1.38 million Broward jury verdict, propane explosion.

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Miami-Dade County Our Miami office takes these claims anywhere in the county.

In Miami-Dade County

Product Liability claims in Miami

The manufacturer will say the product was misused, and will want the item itself sent away for testing on its terms. Meanwhile you are covering the treatment, missing work, and living in a house that may hold more of the same product. Keeping that evidence and proving the fault is our job, and it starts the day you call.

A very large share of consumer goods entering the United States comes through Miami-Dade, which shapes these cases. Where a product was made by a manufacturer with no presence in the country, suing it is slow and sometimes impractical. Florida law places liability across the distribution chain, so the importer, the distributor and in defined circumstances the retailer can be pursued instead. Identifying who actually brought the product into the country is the work, and it is done from the packaging, the labeling and the import records rather than from the manufacturer's name on the item.

Short answer

A very large share of imported consumer goods enters the country through Miami-Dade, so when the maker is overseas the importer and distributor are the reachable defendants. Florida extends strict liability along the distribution chain. The packaging, labeling and import records are how that chain gets reconstructed, which is why the box matters as much as the product.

What to do after a product liability in Miami

Keep the product, exactly as it is. Do not repair it, clean it, return it or send it back for a refund. The item is the case. An engineer examining the actual product is what answers a manufacturer arguing misuse or wear, and no photograph substitutes for it. Where a fire or a crash left only part of it, keep the part. Where a shop or an insurer has it, tell them in writing not to dispose of it.
Keep the box, the manual, the receipt and the charger. The packaging carries the model, the batch and frequently the importer, which is how a reachable defendant gets identified when the maker is overseas. The manual is what the warning claim is measured against. The receipt fixes the date of sale, which matters because a separate outer deadline runs from delivery rather than from injury. People throw all four away and keep the product, which is exactly backward.
Photograph everything before anyone moves it. The product, the scene, the damage, the labels and any warning on the item itself, from several angles and before it is cleaned up. Where there was a fire, photograph what is left in place. Investigators and cleanup crews arrive quickly and are not preserving anything for you.
Do not let it be inspected without you. A manufacturer or insurer will ask to take the item away and look at it. Testing can be destructive, and an examination conducted without your own expert present is one you cannot repeat. Inspections in these cases are arranged jointly, on agreed terms, with both sides watching. Saying no to an informal request costs nothing.
Get treated, and for a medicine get the full pharmacy record. The medical record links the injury to the product and is what a claim is built on. Where a prescription is involved, the complete dispensing history from every pharmacy is the document that establishes what was taken, when and for how long. Nobody remembers it accurately and it we can get in a week.

Where these happen in Miami

What makes a Miami product case different is rarely the defect. It is working out who, inside the United States, is answerable for it.

The import chain

Goods arriving through the seaport and the airport reach consumers through several companies, and the name printed on the front of the item is often the least useful of them.
- The importer of record, who brought the product into the country and is subject to Florida courts
- Distributors and wholesalers between the importer and the shelf
- Private label arrangements, where a domestic brand is applied to somebody else’s product
- Labeling and packaging, which usually carry the importer even when the maker is unreachable
Online marketplaces and counterfeits

A product bought through a marketplace listing may have been made by a company that no longer exists, sold by a seller with no address, and shipped from a warehouse in another state.
- Counterfeit and gray-market goods sold as genuine, particularly chargers, batteries and tools
- Order records, listings and seller details, which change or disappear after a complaint
- Certification marks that were copied rather than earned
- Screenshots of the listing and the seller page, taken before anything is reported
Machinery, components and equipment at work

A large part of the county’s product caseload involves equipment somebody was operating for an employer, which puts two separate claims in play at once.
- A workers’ compensation claim against the employer, and a product claim against the maker
- Guards removed, defeated or never fitted, and who did it
- Component parts that failed inside a machine assembled by somebody else
- Maintenance and inspection records held by the employer rather than the manufacturer
Vehicle and marine components

Tires, airbags, seat belts and marine engine parts, in a county where a great many of them were fitted, serviced or sold rather than made.
- The failed component, which the repairer, tow yard or insurer is holding
- Whether the vehicle or vessel was sold on before anyone examined it
- Installation and service work, which is a separate defendant from the maker
- Import and distribution records for parts brought in through the county

What causes them

Manufacturing faults affecting one batch or one run rather than the whole product line
Warnings and instructions that were missing, buried in small print or placed where nobody reads them
Component parts that failed inside an assembly somebody else built and sold
Lithium cells, packs and chargers that fail by igniting rather than by stopping
Foreseeable misuse the design never accounted for, which manufacturers are expected to anticipate

The injuries we see, and what each one turns on

Amputation and crush injury

Machinery, power tools and equipment with guards that were absent, defeated or badly designed. Limb loss brings prosthetics replaced on a schedule rather than bought once, revision surgery, and a home and a vehicle that have to be changed to work.

Poisoning and internal organ injury

Carbon monoxide from fuel-burning equipment used indoors, and organ damage from medicines and chemical exposure. Both are frequently attributed to something else first, which is why the connection is often made late and why the record of when it was made matters.

Head and brain injury

From falls where a ladder, a chair or a mobility device collapsed, and from equipment that struck somebody. A brain injury requires neither a loss of consciousness nor an abnormal scan, and what follows shows up in memory, concentration, sleep and temper.

What Florida law requires you to prove

Three ways a product can be defective, and everyone who sold it

A claim runs on a defect in design, a defect in manufacture, or a failure to warn, and they are proved differently. Florida applies strict liability along the distribution chain rather than only to the maker, so a manufacturer, a component supplier, an importer, a distributor and in defined circumstances a retailer can each be liable. That matters most where the maker is overseas and effectively out of reach, because the importer who brought the product into the country is here.

A design is judged by what was known when it was built

Under Fla. Stat. § 768.1257, a design defect case is measured against the state of scientific and technical knowledge at the time of manufacture rather than at the time of the injury. It cuts both ways. A manufacturer is not answerable for failing to use a safety feature that did not exist yet, and it is squarely answerable for not using one that did.

Prescription medicines are warned to the doctor, not to you

Florida applies the learned intermediary doctrine, so a drug manufacturer discharges its duty to warn by adequately warning the prescribing physician. The question in a pharmaceutical case is therefore not what you were told. It is what the company knew, when it knew it, and what it told the medical profession, which is why these claims are built from adverse event reporting, internal safety review and regulatory correspondence rather than from a patient’s own file.

Two deadlines run, and the second one surprises people

Most claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year deadline under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, and in a product case it generally runs from when the injury and its cause were or should have been discovered. Separately, Fla. Stat. § 95.031 bars most products claims where the harm came from use of a product more than 12 years after it was delivered to its first purchaser, whatever the injury date. That outer limit stretches to 20 years for aircraft, vessels over 100 gross tons, railroad equipment and improvements to real property, and to whatever period a manufacturer warranted where it warranted more than ten years of useful life. Fault is shared under Fla. Stat. § 768.81.

The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide product liability page rather than being restated in every market.

How we prove it in Miami-Dade County

Two lines of work run at the same time in a Miami product case: proving the defect, and establishing who in the chain can actually be made to answer for it.

What we go after, and when

The product and everything that came with it, unaltered, including packaging and labels
The importer of record and the distributors, identified from labeling, packaging and import documentation
Purchase records, marketplace listings and seller details, captured before they are edited or removed
Certification and testing marks on the item, and whether the certifying body recognizes them
An agreed inspection protocol, with both sides’ experts present
The manufacturer’s and distributor’s complaint, warranty and return records for the same failure
Where the injury happened at work, the employer’s maintenance and inspection file alongside the compensation claim
Recall notices and regulatory action affecting the product line anywhere it was sold

Identifying the reachable defendant early is what decides whether a good defect case is worth bringing, and it is done from documents rather than from the brand name.

A setting a product liability claim in Miami typically arises from

Who would handle your case

Being hurt in Miami is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled product liability claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.

How insurance companies handle these claims

A product manufacturer is not defending one claim. It is defending every claim that could follow from the same finding, which is why these files are contested harder than their value alone would explain.

It was altered, serviced or simply worn out: Raised in nearly every case involving equipment that had been in use. Whether a change was material, whether it caused the failure and who made it are questions for an engineer looking at the item. It is also the reason the product is preserved untouched, because the argument is unanswerable once somebody has taken it apart informally.
The product met every applicable standard: Compliance is evidence and it is not a defense on its own. Standards set a floor, they lag behind what is known, and meeting one says nothing about whether a safer design was available at the time of manufacture. What usually matters more is what the company’s own testing and complaint records showed about the same failure.
Send us the product and we will look at it: Only with an agreement in place and your own expert present. Testing can destroy what it examines, and an inspection you were not part of cannot be repeated. These examinations get arranged jointly, with a protocol, and a manufacturer that declines those terms has told you something.

What a claim can include

Lost income and lost earning capacity

Wages missed, and separately what somebody can no longer earn. Where a hand or an eye is involved, the second figure is usually much larger than the first.

Pain, suffering and loss of the ability to enjoy life

The head of loss an early offer prices lowest, because it is the one with no invoice attached.

Scarring and disfigurement

A separate claim after a burn or an amputation. Photograph the healing as it happens, because a record of what it looked like at three weeks does not exist unless somebody made it.

Another setting a product liability claim in Miami arises from

Why Wolf & Pravato in Miami

A Miami-Dade product case is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse, and the firm has an office on Brickell Avenue rather than a mailing address here. Where a claim has to be built against an importer and a distributor rather than a maker with no presence in the country, that work happens in the county the goods came through.

The firm is led by a Board Certified Civil Trial lawyer, a certification held by 861 attorneys in Florida against a membership over 109,000. Insurance companies keep their own records of which firms in a county actually try cases, and that record moves an offer further than anything a firm can say about itself.

There is no charge to ask. Our fee comes out of what we recover and nowhere else, and if the answer is that you do not have a case, that is the answer you will get.

Call 844-643-7200 Free consultation. No fee unless we win.

Questions

Miami product liability questions

The manufacturer is in another country. Can I still bring a claim?

Usually, though often not against the manufacturer directly. Florida extends strict liability along the distribution chain, so the importer and the distributor are frequently the practical defendants and are subject to Florida courts. The retailer’s position is narrower and depends on the circumstances. The label, the packaging and the import documentation are where the chain gets reconstructed, which is why the box is worth as much as the product.

I bought it from an online marketplace and the seller has vanished.

That happens constantly and it is not the end of the analysis. Screenshot the listing, the seller page and the order record now, before you report anything, because listings get pulled. From there the work runs through the marketplace’s own records, the shipping origin and the importer identified on the packaging. The seller disappearing does not remove everybody else from the chain.

I was hurt by a machine at work. Is that just workers’ compensation?

Not necessarily only that. Compensation covers you against your employer regardless of fault and is usually the immediate source of medical care and wage benefits. A defective machine is a separate claim against its manufacturer, its component suppliers and anyone who serviced it, and that claim is not limited the way compensation is. Both are pursued together, and the equipment needs preserving before the employer puts it back into service.

The product was recalled after I was hurt. Does that help?

It is usually helpful, though a recall is not automatically an admission and its use at trial has limits. What tends to matter more is what the manufacturer knew and when, which the recall investigation and the internal documents behind it often reveal.

I threw the product away. Is my claim finished?

It is harder, not necessarily finished. A claim can still be supported by photographs, the model and lot number, purchase records, medical records describing the mechanism, and evidence of the same failure in other units. Tell us honestly what you still have.

The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.

Tell us what happened

A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1111 Brickell Avenue, 11th Floor, Miami, FL 33131.

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