Taser Trial Begins in St. Louis
On behalf of Brown & Crouppen, P.C. posted in Defective Products on Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Taser International is being sued in St. Louis by a man claiming the company failed to warn police adequately of the dangers of shooting a taser into an individual’s chest. The man was shot with a taser in the chest, suffered a cardiac arrest and brain damage as a result.
The lawsuit will examine if Taser International knew of this risk prior to the incident and if a warning could have prevented his injuries. He is alleging the taser was a defective product because it lacked appropriate warnings.
The officers responding a domestic disturbance call used a taser on him when the attempted to attack them. The taser knocked him on the floor, and eventually the police noticed he was not breathing.
According to the Post-Dispatch, he was in cardiac arrest for 30 minutes. He was placed on life support in the hospital and has suffered permanent brain damage.
His attorneys claim Taser had results of studies that were performed before this incident that alerted the company to the risks interfering with a heart beat by shooting a taser to the chest.
Tasers now come with a warning against aiming for the chest.
This case illustrates how personal injury lawsuits work to help refine the safe operation of many products.
They operate as a check on companies continued selling defective products and often force manufacturers to change how a product is designed, the materials used to construct it, or the instructions and warnings that must accompany the product.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Trial against Taser International starts in St. Louis,” Jennifer Mann, December 5, 2012