> and contact a lawyer
It might be my "European" upbringing, but why? Is there any indicating it was the manufacturers fault?
It might be my "European" upbringing, but why? Is there any indicating it was the manufacturers fault?
Because we are not in Europe, and we rely on lawsuits to keep the manufacturers in check instead of having them regulated like they do in Europe.
Also, because we are not in Europe, we don't have universal healthcare, so the OP's visit to the doctor (and any possible medical care they could need for their injuries) is coming out of their own pocket unless they sue.
Also, because the rules of the "free market" we have here require dangerous products to be clearly labeled as such, but the enforcement of this rule is "the consumers should sue if there's a problem".
In short, every time you hear about Americans being lawsuit-happy, it's because we need to sue to get the stuff that you're taking for granted where you're living.
>Is there any indicating it was the manufacturers fault?
Yes, there is. The OP used the product in accordance to the manufacturer's guidelines[1], and adhered to all safety warnings (which, by the way, didn't even mention risk of fire or chemical burns under normal operating conditions).
Given that, the manufacturer's fault appears to be clearly established.
[1]https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...
>Yes, there is. The OP used the product in accordance to the manufacturer's guidelines[1], and adhered to all safety warnings (which, by the way, didn't even mention risk of fire or chemical burns under normal operating conditions).
No, the OP claims he did that ;)
But even then...
>Given that, the manufacturer's fault appears to be clearly established.
No, honestly, it isn't. There is such a thing as pure accident. Things break, and you have no expectation things won't ever break. This time it broke in a somewhat dangerous way. To me, in order for the manufacturer to be liable, the manufacturer must have committed an "avoidable" act and not acted negligent, such as a deign flaw or manufacturing flaw that could have been avoided by following current knowledge and best practices, or was negligent testing the product properly before release or didn't do proper, constant product quality assurance especially of the dangerous parts.
There are plenty of other reasonable explanations, such as customer misuse, vendor not storing the product properly in some warehouse, improper shipping, or just "shit happens" were nobody really is at fault and all parties involved didn't do anything that was avoidable wrong.
It need not be a design flaw right away, but it well may be. Of course you could be of the opinion that it should be impossible for something like this to happen, and that is definitely a valid position. But even wired headphones have on occasion killed people (a Swiss HAM, for instance).
1. Fault should be assigned, and those at fault should be paying for the damages to those not at fault.
2. People should be insured against these events, and we should assign responsibility to whoever it makes the most sense to have responsible for obtaining insurance.
If you take the second approach, that party is often the manufacturer. The consumer isn't really in a good position to buy flaming headphone insurance because that is such a rare event that any individual consumer has no idea how much coverage they need.
They could get it covered under their general medical or house insurance, but their insurance companies probably don't have much data on how often that specific issue happens to actually figure out the right price, so it just will get lumped into some general category of unclassified accidents.
The manufacturer, on the other hand, will have data in how often this happens, so a proper price for insurance can be determined. The manufacturer can likely get a breakdown of how often these incidents are due to manufacturing defects, how often they could have been prevented by minor design changes, how often they are due to the consumer doing something stupid, and so on. That can lead the manufacturer to make changes to reduce future such incidents. That would be much less likely if the incidents were handled by health or house insurance.
That's you setting things on fire.
Here, the user did not set the headphones on fire.
If normal operation can cause the headphones to catch fire, Bose should market these headphones as such, e.g. "Do not charge these headphones, doing this may cause them to catch fire. Discard after first use."
That's right, and let me fix the rest of the comment:
> Suing Americans can be awarded enough money to pay for their medical bills in some cases, and that's their only recourse when the injuries are severe
That's compensatory damages you will be awarded that in both systems.
The main difference there is that in most European countries medical bills are cheaper, public health care will cover most of the costs and most people are insured for the rest. If the costs are important, your insurance and the insurance of the party at fault will negotiate. They will only involve the justice system if they can't agree.
Don’t try to figure these things out yourself.