Dangerous Equipment, Toys, & Products

Welcome to the Rodgers Law Firm

Lives change totally when someone is seriously injured or killed by a defective product while being innocently used by the consumer or worker in the home, in recreation, in traveling, or on the job. No amount of money can compensate for the victim’s serious injury or the death of a loved one, and no words can describe the heartache.
We at the Rodgers Law Firm in Fort Worth, Texas understand the devastation and losses caused by this type of tragedy. Victims who survive often have no transportation, are unable to work due to the injury, have no health insurance or large savings to pay for medical care, may not know how to find health care providers that will wait for payment until the case settles, and do not have the energy or know how to deal with the insurance company for the wrongdoer.
Grieving relatives may be further burdened by intense feeling of anger and frustration when the injury or death is not from natural causes and could have been easily avoided if the person at fault, the wrongdoer, had only been more careful.
That's why we are here – to do everything we can to help our clients get the answers, the assistance, and the compensation that they are entitled to under the law.

Examples of unsafe products include breast implants that leak and harm the immune system, pharmaceutical drugs that cause birth defects, combustible containers that explode and injure workers, household appliances that cause electrical shocks, toys that injure children during normal play, pickup trucks whose gas tanks easily explode in a side collision, automobiles that overturn easily, and tires that loose their treads in the heat at highway speeds.

We handle defective product cases all over the DFW Metroplex and surrounding cities, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Denton, Burleson, Cleburne, Decatur, Weatherford, Haltom City, North Richland Hills, Richland Hills, Azle, Mineral Wells, Sherman, and Denison.
If you or someone you know has been harmed by a defective consumer product, contact us for a free, no obligation consultation.

We will meet with you at our office or any location convenient to you.
In a free, no obligation consultation with us you may evaluate our capabilities to help you and other family members work through the legal, economic and emotional hurdles faced in this kind of calamity.
The following pages of detailed legal information will give you insights into the depth of our technical capabilities in motor vehicle accident cases.

Examples of Defective Product Cases Handled By Our Law Firm

Fuel Truck Driver Injured by
Fuel Storage Tank High Pressure Explosion
Violation of OSHA Regulations
Ennis, Texas

Our client was employed as a fuel tank truck driver for a fuel company. He was scheduled to make a delivery of fuel to an asphalt plant that had a 5,000 gallon above-ground storage tank approximately 25 feet long that was used to supply fuel to the asphalt burner and to refuel plant trucks.

The storage tank was subject to OSHA regulations that required that the storage tank be equipped with a relief valve which directed all vapors to an incinerator, that the tank owner ensure that the storage tank was adequately vented to prevent development of pressure, as a result of the fuel filling process, from exceeding the design pressure of the tank, and that the tank owner take steps to prevent or minimize the consequences of catastrophic releases of explosive chemicals.

American Petroleum Institute (“API”) safety standards required pressure and vacuum-relieving devices be placed on the storage tank, and that the storage tank must be regularly inspected by an “authorized inspector,” one that holds an API certification as an inspector.

The owner of the asphalt plant ignored all of these regulations and safety standards for years. The client climbed on top of the storage tank and began the process of pumping 5,000 gallons of fuel into the storage tank through a fill pipe on top of the storage tank. Without his knowledge, pressure began building inside the storage tank while the fuel was being pumped inside it.

As he was nearing completion of the fuel delivery, suddenly and without warning the excess pressure that had built-up in the tank burst out of the fill pipe. The escaping high pressure air blast threw him up into the air and off the top of the storage tank, causing him to fall 10 to 12 feet to the ground at a place 12-15 feet away from the storage tank. The explosion severely injured his neck and back. Luckily he did not require surgery.

The case settled before trial. (F275A)

Four Year Old Boy Burned by Scalding Soup
Delivered By Restaurant‘s Delivery Employee
Fort Worth, Texas

Our client, a four year old boy who was a pre-kindergarden student, loved wonton soup. A local chinese restaurant offered a free delivery service to homes in the neighborhood. On the evening of May 16 his parents phoned the restaurant and placed an order for the entire family for delivery, including wonton soup for the boy.

When the food was delivered, the mother removed the top of the styrofoam soup container and placed the soup in front of him on the dining room table. Unbeknownst to the family, the soup was exceedingly hot when poured into the styrofoam cup at the restaurant, so hot that between the time the soup was poured there and the time the lid was removed in the home, approximately 15 minutes later, the temperature had deformed the bottom of the cup so that it was unstable and more easily subject to being overturned. We know this because the parents had enough presence of mind to preserve the container the soup was delivered in.

She then left the room to take food to her husband, who was ill in bed in another room. While she was gone, our client accidentally brushed his arm against the soup container, knocking the soup into his lap. He began screaming in pain and the mother ran back into the room. She took him to the shower, undressed him and ran cold water on his lap area. He began losing skin in the burned area. She then wrapped him in a wet sheet and rushed him to the hospital.

Hospital personnel determined that he had sustained 2nd and 3rd degree burns to his genital area and thighs. His bandages had to be changed 3 times a day for six weeks, a process that was excruciatingly painful. He missed the rest of the school year. The emotional trauma was so great that he had to undergo psychological counseling at various times over the next 3 years. Plastic surgery was ultimately performed to minimize the scarring on his thigh.

The boy’s grandmother contacted us a week later and, with the parents permission, hired us to represent the boy with the grandmother serving as the child’s legal representative because of potential conflicts of interest with the parents. The parents hired another attorney to represent them.

Burn medical references we checked stated that a child would sustain a 3rd degree burn in less than one second if the liquid was 155 degrees or higher. The severity of burns depends on the depth, area and location of the burn. Burn depth is generally categorized as first, second or third degree.

A first degree burn is superficial and has similar characteristics to a typical sun burn. The skin is red in color and sensation is intact. It is usually somewhat painful.

Second degree burns look similar to the first degree burns; however, the damage is severe enough to cause blistering of the skin and the pain is usually more intense.

In third degree burns the damage has progressed to the point of skin death. The skin is white and without sensation.

The question became: How do we prove the temperature the soup was when it was delivered by the restaurant delivery service on May 16? We hired an investigator to be present in the home on May 27 when the parents would again order the wonton soup. The investigator would video all aspects of the delivery and temperature testing of the soup.

The delivery service was videoed delivering the soup to the home. The video was continued inside the home as the delivery bag was opened, the soup container taken out, the top removed, and a heat thermometer was placed inside the soup container, the kind used to test the temperature of meat roasting in an oven.

The video of the thermometer proved that the soup had reached the house on May 27 at a temperature of 165 degrees when the container was opened. The accuracy of this video to prove the soup temperature was dangerously high was not challenged by the defendants when presented to them later during the lawsuit.

Suit was brought against the restaurant for serving soup dangerously hot without warning the parents of the dangerously high temperature – the parents would then have known to pour the soup into another container and let it cool for a few minutes before serving it and no one need be injured.

At his deposition the restaurant owner, an engineer by training, admitted knowing that the soup was routinely poured into the container at a very high temperature, and this was deliberately done to prevent complaints that the soup was too cool when delivered to the home. The top of the delivery bag was always stapled together and a restaurant menu was stapled to the top.

He had no reasonable response when asked why he did not also merely staple a note on top of the menu warning the customer that any soup inside was very hot to prevent the need to reheat the soup and should be checked for proper serving temperature. Each warning note would cost less than five cents to print.

Suit was also brought against the styrofoam container manufacturer, a nationally know company, on the grounds that the container was a defective product and the manufacturer did not warn the restaurant that the container would deform if liquids higher than 140 degrees were put in the container, a fact known to the manufacturer.

The lawsuit was settled with both defendants prior to trial. (A90K)

Amusement Park Customer Injured By Defectively-Designed Water Inner Tube Ride
Arlington, Texas

Our client, a slender built woman in her 40’s and her friend went to a water amusement park in Arlington, Texas. One of the rides they chose used large inner tubes, capable of holding up to six passengers, that were sent down a water slide starting at the top of a 70-foot tower and then zoomed over a 300-foot, triple-dip, bouncing course.

The ride had a sign stating “600 Pound Limit” to limit the total weight of all passengers riding in each inner tube to 600 pounds. The park ride attendants were responsible for directing riders as to where to sit and how many could sit in each inner tube.

Our client, her friend, and two very large men, each weighing at least 250 pounds, were instructed by the ride attendant to sit in the same tube. Our client questioned the ride attendant as to why he was not following the posted weight restriction, because the total weight of all four riders seemed to be well over 600 pounds. The ride attendant replied to the effect that it was “its ok, we do it all the time.”

Accepting this reassurance, our client then sat in the innertube, along with the other three passengers. She grabbed the handles of the ride and waited for the others to be
seated. Once the four passengers were seated, the attendant then attempted to send the tube to the release area. However, the tube was so heavy that it would not float over the lip of the loading pool. The ride attendant asked the men to bounce up and down so that they could clear the lip of the pool to go down the slide.

The tube went down the slide and, as she went over the first dip, she was bounced very high, which caused her to become alarmed for her safety and to tighten her grip on the handles of the tube at the bottom of the tube.

As she went over the second slide dip, the tube suddenly made very unusual and unexpected movements, which caused her to be forcefully thrown from the tube and upward several feet into the air. When she came down, she slammed into the side of the slide, landing on her rear end.

She was then washed all the way down the slide by the rapidly flowing water and into the unloading pool at the bottom of the slide. As she came up out of the water, she saw the tube she begin the ride in pass by her in the unloading pool carrying only the two large men. Her friend had also been ejected from the tube.

She suffered a fractured coccyx in the accident, a very painful condition that can last for years. Discovery showed that two other injury lawsuits had been filed before our client’s accident for the same problem with the ride – being forcefully thrown from the ride in a way that caused severe injuries. The suit was settled prior to trial. (T15E)

Amusement Park Customer Injured By Defectively-Designed Toboggan Water Ride
Arlington, Texas

Our client, a woman in her late 20’s, visited the same water amusement park in Arlington, Texas that was visited by our client described above. She was injured at the end of a 45-foot water slide ride when the toboggan she was riding in flipped after hitting the water at the end of the slide.

Her leg was pulled backward by the force of the water and her foot struck sharp rocks at the bottom of the pool, permanently injuring her hip and ankle. The case settled prior to filing suit. (SV)

Overview of Product Liability Cases in Texas
Manufacturers and retail store owners have a responsibility to the public to ensure the products they produce are safe and not defective. When a defective product causes harm to a consumer the manufacturer (and sometimes the wholesaler, designer, or retailer) is liable, no matter how much care they exercised. The manufacturer or retailer is liable for damages as long as the consumer was using the product as it was meant to be used at the time of his or her injury. No matter what the product, manufacturers must make sure they are designed correctly, that they have passed quality control tests, that no defective or dangerous products enter the market, and that each product has a warning label that is easy to locate and understand.

The safety of products sold by manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers is a concern to all of us as product users. Too often consumers, homeowners, and workers are injured through no fault of their own by defective, dangerous products that could not be safely used.

Unsafe products may be defective in their design, in the way they were made, in their instructions or directions for safe use, and in not properly warning the user about dangers in using them.

If a defective, dangerous product is involved in your accident:

first, save the device itself that injured you and do not change it in any way. If you do not own it, contact your attorney before you return it to the owner.

Second, save everything you have that relates in any way to the product that injured you. Save the packaging it came in, the invoice or bill you received if you bought it, the rental agreement if you rented it, your check or charge slip paying to purchase or rent it, and all advertisements, directions, instructions, and warnings relating to the product. Your attorney may need these to prove critical facts about your case.

Losing the Right to Make the Claim
You must file your lawsuit within a certain time period or else you will lose your right to pursue your claim. In many cases, the suit must be filed within two years from the date of the accident.

Simply contacting the business responsible for the premises where the accident occurred or contacting the businesses’ insurance company about the accident is not enough to stop the running of the two year period.
There are other reasons to act quickly. Key witnesses may disappear, witnesses’ memories may fade, and vital documents may be lost. Sometimes it takes months of investigation to determine who the true defendants are that are legally responsible for the accident. It is crucially important that you do not delay in consulting with an attorney.

Contact us for a free no-obligation consultation as soon as possible to ensure that you retain your right to pursue your claim.
Contact Us for a Second Opinion If Another Attorney Has Declined To Represent You
Attorneys regularly decide whether the case that they are reviewing does or does not meet all the requirements to be a viable, sound case. Making this determination is not an exact science. Based on different experiences and analytic abilities, one attorney may turn down the opportunity to represent a client and another attorney may shortly thereafter decide to take the case.

The second reviewing attorney saw something the first reviewing attorney may have overlooked. The first attorney may have decided that liability was not clear, that you were not the type of relative that would be entitled to make a wrongful death claim, that there was not available insurance coverage or other sources to pay the money damages, or that there were other problems in seeking a recovery.

We would welcome the opportunity to review your family’s wrongful death claim even if another attorney has turned the case down. There is no charge or obligation for our review.
You may contact us at the following phone numbers at any time:

Office: toll free: 1-866-560-1075

local: 817-717-4080
Copyright 1994 - 2007 Clifford B. Rodgers.
Last Modified July 6, 2007.