Injured by Faulty Furniture?

Nothing highlights your home or office like a nicely coordinated set of furniture. Inviting, comfortable and aesthetically pleasing, good furniture can turn a simple space into something more special. However, not all furniture is made the same. Sometimes furniture can fail, leading to injuries that put your health and financial future in jeopardy. If failing furniture has caused you or someone you love an injury, contact the expert Cambridge personal injury attorneys at Altman & Altman LLP today.

While they certainly still exist, the days of a lifelong skilled artisanal furniture maker painstakingly working for days at a time to complete one piece of furniture are largely gone. With the growth of society and the rise of mass-production, furniture is largely made in factories via robots or through more traditional millwork, which can outpace any one skilled laborer by a vast margin.

However, with decreased time and attention – and the decreased cost that comes with it – also comes various bad elements, such as design flaws, mechanical malfunctions and instability. As companies produce thousands or millions of units of furniture each year, some are bound to be defective and some are bound to break, which can cause terrible injuries to those who utilize them.

When dealing with an injury caused by furniture, it is important to figure out what led the furniture to fail. Was it improperly designed? Was it improperly or incorrectly assembled in a factory? Was the furniture not graded for a certain weight but the manufacturer or supplier failed to warn of this fact prior to selling the product?

There’s no one way that furniture malfunctioning can lead to an injury, but the types of injuries normally associated with furniture failure include falls, lacerations and head injuries. After all, people are quite prone to injury when the last thing they are expecting is to suddenly be hurtling towards the floor after a chair breaks, or a rotating bar stool suddenly locks in place and flings you.

Picture a normal office chair that has two functions – a locked back for sitting up and doing some work on a computer, and an unlocked back that allows for a more relaxed posture where the chair can rock back and forth and be reclined. The user puts the chair into relaxed mode and leans back to stretch after completing a long assignment. Without warning or any particular reason, the chair back fails and sends the user tumbling backwards, causing them to land on their head and causing a concussion.

In this instance, the user did nothing while sitting in the chair that was unreasonable or outside the realm of how it was intended to be used, and they received a serious injury anyways. This is a trademark of a faulty product – one that was improperly designed or manufactured – and it could leave the designer or manufacturer of the chair (or both) to be held liable in a personal injury claim.

Nobody expects to be injured by a faulty piece of furniture, but if it does happen then you want to be sure you have an experienced team of professionals ready to advocate on your behalf – especially if the injury that occurred resulted in a long hospital stay, costly medical expenses or made you miss significant time away from work. A successful personal injury claim or a settlement from the furniture manufacturer can take the pressure off these financial burdens and give you peace of mind.

In terms of professionalism, few firms can boast the 50 years of experience that Altman & Altman LLP has amassed over the years in helping our clients from Cambridge, Boston and throughout Massachusetts. We will take the time to learn about what happened and work with you to forge a winning strategy that leaves you feeling secure and satisfied.

Contact us online or call for a free consultation to go over the details of your case today at 617.492.3000 or toll-free at 800.481.6199. We are available 24/7.