The product as designed
A design defect is a problem with the plan. The product was built exactly as intended, and the intended product is what hurt someone. A space heater with no cutoff when it tips over, a machine whose guard can be removed without a tool while it runs, a folding chair whose hinge pinches a hand in ordinary use, a fuel system that lets fuel reach an ignition source in a foreseeable collision, a children’s product with a part that separates under ordinary handling: each illustrates a danger shared by every unit, not a flaw in one. Each is offered to show the kind of question a design case asks; none describes a client, a brand, or a finding about any product.
Whether one unit departed from its specifications is the Manufacturing Defects question; whether the risk was adequately communicated is the Failure to Warn question. A product can raise all three, and the review does not pick one from the injury. It starts from the product, its design history, and what happened.
Texas requires a safer alternative design
Texas law places a specific burden on the person bringing a design defect claim. That person must prove that a safer alternative design existed and that the design defect was a producing cause of the injury. A safer alternative design is defined by statute: a design other than the one actually used that, in reasonable probability, would have prevented or significantly reduced the risk of the injury without substantially impairing the product’s utility, and that was economically and technologically feasible at the time the product left the control of the manufacturer or seller, using scientific knowledge that existed or was reasonably achievable then.
Each part of that definition does work. The alternative has to be a real design, not the idea that the product should have been safer. It has to address the risk that caused this injury, not a different one. It cannot make the product useless for its purpose or so expensive that it becomes a different product. And it is judged by what was knowable and buildable at the applicable time it left the manufacturer’s or seller’s control, not by what a later generation of the product does. This is not an element an attorney fills in later; it is what the claim is, and a design case is evaluated from the start by whether such a design can be identified and shown to have been feasible, which takes qualified engineering analysis and the maker’s own design and testing records.
Weighing usefulness against danger
Whether a design is unreasonably dangerous is decided by weighing its risks against its usefulness. Texas courts weigh, among other things:
- how useful the product is to its users and the public, against how likely and how severe an injury from it is;
- whether another product was available that met the same need without the danger and without being unreasonably expensive;
- whether the maker could have removed the danger without seriously impairing the product’s usefulness or significantly raising its cost;
- how aware an ordinary user would be of the danger, and how able to avoid it, given general knowledge, the obvious condition of the product, and any warnings or instructions; and
- what an ordinary consumer expects of the product.
Those are considerations, not a checklist, and no one of them decides a case. A jury weighs them in the ordinary case; where the evidence is such that reasonable people could not disagree, a court may decide the question itself. Reading the list at home does not tell a person whether a design was defective, because the answer depends on what the design records, the testing, the industry’s standards, and the engineering analysis show.
Obvious dangers and warning labels
Texas does not treat an obvious danger as an automatic bar to a design claim. That a risk was apparent is one consideration in the weighing described above, and on particular facts it can be an important one, but the Supreme Court of Texas has declined to adopt a rule that an open and obvious danger defeats a design defect claim by itself. The question remains whether a safer alternative design was realistically available.
A warning label does not settle a design question either. The Supreme Court of Texas has held that the fact that a product carries an adequate warning does not conclusively establish that the product is not defective; if a safer alternative design was available and practical, the maker cannot count on having warned about the danger to defeat the claim; the warning is weighed with everything else. The reverse is also true, and it matters for what is claimed: an adequate warning can fully answer a claim that the maker failed to warn, which is a separate failure-to-warn claim. Whether a product’s problem is one of design, of warning, or of both is a conclusion the evidence supports, not a label chosen in advance.
Federal standards and recalls
Compliance with a federal safety standard matters, and it is not the end of the case. Texas law gives a manufacturer or seller a rebuttable presumption that it is not liable for a design, formulation, or labeling defect if it shows that the product complied with mandatory federal safety standards that applied to the product when it was made and that governed the specific risk that caused the harm. The injured person can rebut that presumption by showing that the federal standard was inadequate to protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury, or that the manufacturer withheld or misrepresented material information to the federal agency. The Supreme Court of Texas applied that presumption in 2024 and found it unrebutted on the record before it; the decision shows both that the presumption is real and that overcoming it requires evidence about the standard itself, not about the product alone. The presumption does not extend to manufacturing flaws.
A recall of an entire model is not a finding that the design was defective, and no recall is not a finding that it was safe. A recall is a corrective action the company carries out, sometimes under an agency’s supervision, and it describes a hazard, the units covered, and a remedy. It is relevant, and the maker’s own written notice of a defect to buyers can be evidence against it, but whether the design was unreasonably dangerous and whether a safer alternative existed are decided from the design record and the engineering, not from the existence of a campaign. Whether an agency investigated, whether a standard existed, whether the maker complied with it, and whether a court would find a defect are separate questions.
Who designed it, and who answers
The company that designed the product is the first to ask about, and it is not always the only one. Texas defines a manufacturer to include anyone who designs, formulates, constructs, fabricates, produces, or assembles a product or any component part of it and places it into the stream of commerce, and the Supreme Court of Texas has upheld findings against both the maker of a component and the company that built the component into the finished product for the same design defect. A seller that had no part in making the product is treated differently, and the situations in which Texas law reaches such a seller are explained with manufacturing defects; for a design claim the relevant ones include participation in the design and a maker beyond the court’s reach. The chain from design to sale is identified from the product and its records before anyone is named.
Safety first, then the design record
Safety comes before evidence with any product, and here with one addition: because the danger in a design case is shared by every unit, a reader may still own or use other units of the same product, and the maker’s recall instructions, the fire department, a utility, or hazardous-materials responders decide what happens to a damaged battery, an appliance that overheated, a pressurized or fuel-carrying component, a chemical, or a tool that is still energized.
No item is handled, recharged, dismantled, tested, transported, or stored at home to keep it as evidence or to see whether the design was at fault. Where there is a smell of gas, smoke, a battery that hisses or swells, or a chemical release, everyone leaves and calls 911 or the utility from outside before anything else. Stopping use of other units of the same product while the maker’s and the agencies’ recall notices are checked costs nothing.
The design record is then assembled from two directions. From the reader’s side: the location and custodian of the unit that failed, with preservation coordinated by qualified people where safely possible without delaying protective action or an applicable recall remedy; the manual, packaging, and any marketing that came with the product; manufacturing, distribution, sale, and purchase records that help establish when it left the manufacturer’s or seller’s control; photographs already taken; and any communications with the seller or maker. From the companies’ side, through legal process: design drawings and history, the alternatives the maker considered and rejected, testing, the voluntary and mandatory standards it worked to, complaints and incident reports, and what changed in later versions of the product. A correctly functioning example of the same model, and where relevant a competing product that addressed the risk differently, are examined alongside the unit. Leatherwood & Schindler asks qualified custodians to preserve it where safely possible without delaying protective action or an applicable recall remedy, identifies the companies in the design and supply chain, and arranges examination that all sides may attend.
Where design questions arise, and the first conversation
The design question travels with the event that raised it. The collision itself is investigated as a car accident or a truck accident, and a vehicle’s restraint, fuel, or structural design raises a separate product question; a vessel’s steering, throttle, or cutoff system arises in a boating or jet ski incident; a machine’s guarding or controls on a worksite is raised with a third-party workplace claim; an appliance, regulator, or connector before a fire or explosion is a product question; and a death becomes a wrongful death claim, which determines who may act and what a death case adds. Burns, amputations, and other catastrophic injuries are documented as injuries, alongside the separate analysis of the product’s design.
A design review needs the product’s history, including manufacturing, distribution, sale, and purchase records. Those records help establish the applicable time it left the manufacturer’s or seller’s control; the retail purchase date does not automatically fix the knowledge and technology used to assess a safer alternative design. The review also covers the product itself and who has it, what came with it, and the medical care so far; the design, testing, and standards records are requested from the companies once the chain from design to sale is known. A consultation can start from the product alone, before any conclusion about its design.