Georgia Injury Claims: Manufacturer Liability in 2026

There’s a ton of bad information out there about who pays for injuries from defective equipment on construction sites. People don’t know their rights or what manufacturers are supposed to do. So when a machine gives out and somebody gets seriously hurt, who’s really on the hook?

Myth 1: Only the employer is responsible for a construction injury.

A lot of people hurt on a construction site think their employer is the only one who can be held responsible for their medical bills and lost pay. That’s a deep and costly miscalculation. While your employer is on the hook through workers’ compensation, that system is designed to provide limited benefits, it covers some of your medical bills and a fraction of your lost wages, but it also shields your boss from being sued directly for negligence. That shield, however, does nothing to protect a third party like an equipment manufacturer. For example, if a worker in Atlanta takes a nasty fall because a scaffold from Acme Scaffolding, Inc. collapses due to a faulty weld, that worker can file a workers’ comp claim against their employer for basic benefits. At the same time, they can and should file a separate product liability lawsuit against Acme Scaffolding, Inc. This second “third-party claim” is where you recover money for pain and suffering, your full lost wages (not just a percentage), and all the other damages workers’ comp doesn’t cover. We see this all the time in cases involving heavy machinery failures on projects near the I-75/I-85 connector. Whether your employer followed safety rules is a completely separate issue from whether the equipment itself was safe to begin with.

Myth 2: You must prove the manufacturer was negligent to win a defective equipment case.

It’s a common mistake to think you have to prove a manufacturer was careless to win a product liability case. In Georgia, that’s often not true because of the principle of strict liability. Under O.C.G.A. Section 51-1-11, a manufacturer can be found liable for injuries from a defective product even if they took every possible precaution during manufacturing. The whole argument shifts from the company’s behavior to the condition of the product itself. Think about a crane operator in Savannah who suffers a traumatic brain injury after a hydraulic line bursts, causing the boom to crash down. If that hydraulic line was flawed from the start, either in its design or its materials, the crane manufacturer could be strictly liable. The injured operator doesn’t have to show the company knew about the bad line or had sloppy quality control. They just have to prove the product was defective when it left the manufacturer’s hands, the defect caused the injury, and the product was being used as intended (or in a foreseeably incorrect way). It’s a much more direct path than trying to prove a big corporation acted irresponsibly, though sometimes we end up arguing both points.

Myth 3: All product defects are the same in a lawsuit.

People hear “defect” and think it’s a single concept, but in court, we have to deal with three distinct types, and each one requires a completely different kind of proof. The categories are design defects, manufacturing defects, and warning defects. A design defect means the entire product line is dangerous because the design itself is unsafe, even if it’s built perfectly to spec. A classic example is a power saw sold without a necessary blade guard, making it unreasonably dangerous. To prove this, we usually need an expert engineer to testify that a safer, affordable alternative design existed when it was made. A manufacturing defect is a one-off screw-up where a specific item came off the assembly line wrong. This is an anomaly, like a bad batch of bolts used in one piece of heavy machinery or a single bad weld that no one caught. Proving it involves comparing the one broken item to the manufacturer’s own design plans or to other identical units that didn’t fail. Finally, a warning defect (or failure to warn) happens when a product has non-obvious dangers and the manufacturer didn’t provide clear instructions or warnings. If a chemical solvent needs special ventilation but the can doesn’t say so, and a worker gets lung damage, that’s a failure to warn. So, if we get a case involving a scaffold collapse at a job near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, our first step is to figure out which type of defect we’re looking at, because our entire investigation and legal strategy will flow from that decision.

Myth 4: If you modified the equipment, you lose all rights to compensation.

The idea that you automatically lose your right to sue if you modified a piece of equipment is a pervasive myth, and it’s one that manufacturers’ lawyers love. While modifying gear can definitely complicate a case, it doesn’t just erase the manufacturer’s liability. The real legal question is whether the modification was foreseeable and, more importantly, if the original defect was still a major cause of the injury. Let’s say a construction crew in Macon welds a custom bracket onto a forklift, and that bracket later fails and causes an injury. The forklift manufacturer will scream that the modification is the sole cause. But what if the forklift’s own braking system was also defective and failed, which is why the operator couldn’t stop the accident even after the bracket broke? In that scenario, the manufacturer could still be on the hook. Georgia law uses a system of comparative negligence. If your actions (like modifying the equipment) contributed to the accident, a jury might reduce your compensation, but it won’t automatically bar you from recovering anything. We often bring in forensic engineers to create a precise timeline of the failure to separate the effect of the modification from the effect of the original defect.

Myth 5: You have unlimited time to file a claim for a defective equipment injury.

This is probably the most dangerous myth of all. Waiting to act can destroy a perfectly valid case. Every legal claim for defective equipment injuries is governed by a strict deadline called a statute of limitations. Here in Georgia, the general statute of limitations for personal injury cases, including product liability, is two years from the date of the injury. That means if you get hurt, you typically have two years from that day to get a lawsuit filed in a court, like the Fulton County Superior Court. Miss that deadline by one day, and your right to sue is gone forever. On top of that, Georgia has a statute of repose, found in O.C.G.A. Section 51-1-11(b)(2), which is another trap. It generally prevents you from filing a product liability claim if the product was sold more than 10 years before your injury occurred. This means that if a part fails on a 12-year-old machine, you might be out of luck, no matter how clear the defect is. It is absolutely essential that you talk to an attorney who handles product liability cases as soon as possible after an injury. Delaying is the single biggest mistake you can make.