The machine had run fine for years, right up until the moment it caught your glove and pulled your hand into the gears. Now there is surgery to schedule, wages you are not earning, and one question that keeps surfacing: Who pays for this? In North Dakota, the company that designed or built defective equipment can be held financially responsible, separately from your employer and separately from workers’ compensation. Our North Dakota personal injury attorneys help injured workers and consumers in Grand Forks, Minot, and across the state hold negligent manufacturers accountable.
How a Defective Product Becomes Someone Else’s Legal Responsibility
Under North Dakota law, a products liability claim can be brought against the manufacturer or seller of a product for an injury caused by the way it was designed, built, assembled, labeled, or sold, or by a failure to warn about a hidden danger. A product is not automatically defective just because someone was hurt while using it. The law treats a product as defective only if it carried a defect at the time it was sold that made it unreasonably dangerous to the person using it. In plain terms, the equipment has to be dangerous beyond what an ordinary, careful user would expect.
Defective equipment usually falls into one of three categories:
- A design defect, where the product is dangerous because of how it was engineered, even when it is built correctly.
- A manufacturing defect, where a flaw in production made one machine or batch dangerous.
- A warning defect, where the maker failed to provide adequate instructions or safety warnings.
The manufacturer is usually the central defendant. A North Dakota seller that did not actually make the product can often be dismissed from the case once it identifies the true manufacturer, unless the seller helped design the product, knew about the defect, or created it. The maker can also avoid liability if someone substantially altered the equipment after the sale and that change caused the injury.
Injured on the Job? You May Still Have a Claim Against the Manufacturer
Many serious equipment injuries in North Dakota happen at work, on oilfields, farms, construction sites, and factory floors. If you were hurt on the job, your workers’ compensation benefits through Workforce Safety and Insurance are generally your only remedy against your employer. State law makes that coverage the exclusive remedy and bars most injury lawsuits against an employer, with a narrow exception for an injury the employer inflicted on purpose.
That bar protects your employer. It does not protect the outside company that designed or built the defective machine. A products liability claim runs against that manufacturer, not your boss, so the workers’ compensation system does not erase it. Pursuing the manufacturer can open the door to compensation that workers’ compensation does not pay, including full lost earnings and money for pain and suffering. Our Grand Forks and Minot workplace injury attorneys can pursue both paths and coordinate them so you are not forced to choose.
What You Have to Prove, and the Defenses Manufacturers Raise
To win, you generally must show that the product had a defect when it left the manufacturer or first seller, that the defect made the product unreasonably dangerous, and that the defect caused your injury. That sounds straightforward, but manufacturers fight hard on each point.
One defense is written into North Dakota law. If the product’s design, warnings, or testing met the government or industry standards that existed when it was made, the law presumes the product was not defective. That presumption is not the end of the case. It can be rebutted with evidence that the standards were inadequate or that the maker ignored known risks.
Workers who operate or maintain machinery suffer roughly 18,000 amputations and other severe injuries, plus more than 800 deaths, every year, which is why federal safety regulators require guards on dangerous equipment. When a guard was missing, poorly designed, or easy to bypass, that history can help show the product was unreasonably dangerous in the first place.
Deadlines for Filing a North Dakota Products Liability Claim
Two separate clocks matter in these cases. Knowing how each of these deadlines work is crucial for protecting your rights.
The first is a statute of repose. North Dakota generally bars recovery in a products liability case unless the injury happened within ten years of the product’s first purchase for use, or within eleven years of the date it was manufactured. That cutoff applies no matter the age of the injured person. There is an important exception. If the manufacturer issued a recall or knew about a defect and failed to warn users, the ten and eleven year limits do not bar the claim.
The second clock is the deadline to file suit after you are hurt. North Dakota’s general personal injury deadline gives you six years from the injury to bring a claim, and a wrongful death claim must be filed within two years. Because the defective equipment itself is often the most important evidence, it is wise to talk to a lawyer early, before the machine is repaired, scrapped, or returned.
How Shared Fault Can Reduce Your Recovery
North Dakota follows a modified comparative fault rule. You can still recover even if you were partly at fault, but not if your share of the fault is as great as the combined fault of everyone else who caused the injury. In a case against a single manufacturer, that means an injured person who is fifty percent or more at fault recovers nothing, while someone less at fault has the award reduced by their percentage. When more than one company is responsible, each pays only its own share rather than the entire amount.
Expect the manufacturer to argue that you misused the product or ignored a warning, because misuse counts as fault under North Dakota law. Federal researchers who track machine related workplace injuries note that machines cause thousands of serious injuries every year and that effective safeguards are essential to preventing them, which is a reminder that equipment design and maintenance, not just operator behavior, is often central to these cases. A thorough investigation often shifts the fault back where it belongs, onto the company that built the dangerous product.
Hold a Negligent Manufacturer Accountable
If defective equipment hurts you or someone you love in North Dakota, you do not have to take on a manufacturer alone. For more than a century, Pringle & Herigstad, P.C. has stood up for injured North Dakotans in Grand Forks, Minot, and across the state, taking on large corporations and their insurers. We work on a contingency fee, so you owe nothing unless we recover for you. Contact us for a free consultation and find out what your claim may be worth.