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Accidents involving consumer products fall into four categories:.
• The injury was the fault of the person using the product.
• The injury is simply the result of an accident, the cause of which was not anyone's negligent behavior.
• The injury was caused by a product that was in some way defective and that defect was the cause of the injury. Or, to put it in another way, if the product had been made safely there would have been no injury.
• The injury was caused by an unforeseeable misuse of the product and thus was the user's fault rather than the manufacturers.
According to statistics made available by the "consumer product safety commission", approximately 28000 Americans die and 33 million others, almost one-eighth of entire population of this country, are injured each year as a result of accidents involving consumer products. And these figures don't even include accidents involving products that are not under the jurisdiction of the CPSC, which would include industrial and farm equipment. Most of these accidents, however are minor-such as cuts and bruises -and they don't necessarily involve defective products.".
"Mr.Hasert testified that liability, costs in the United States are 15 times greater that in Europe.One reason for this cost differential is that, like US manufacturers sell most of their products at home. Liability costs per product are based on liability exposure, and since exposure is so much less abroad, US liability costs are higher than our foreign competitors. US products also receive more liability exposure because of longevity in the market. In US manufacturers have to defend themselves against products which have been in the market for a long period of time like 40 or 50 years and also for the products which have not been manufactured by them but were acquired from someone else. The other nations when compared to US have short statutes of repose, such as a 10-year statute in European community.