Los Angeles Injury Lawyer Blog

A man was electrocuted to death in North Hollywood, California by a defective product he had bought at a thrift shop in Los Angeles. His wife called our firm, and we took on her case as a wrongful death with both product liability for the faulty device as well as premises liability because the rented home they lived in had faulty electrical wiring. We sued the landlord and the manufacturer and settled the case with both defendants on behalf of his wife for substantial six figures.

It was tragic that a hobby would lead to the wrongful death of our client’s husband. In these situations, clients need to hire strong personal injury lawyers to fight their case. While there was nothing we could do to bring our client’s husband back, we were determined to bring to justice those responsible for this tragedy and to help our client with her financial difficulties since her husband had died. This is what happened: the couple used to buy items at the thrift shop and they would resell them at swap meets. Our clients took home the contents to sort out what they had purchased. One item looked like an old food warmer, but they weren’t sure what it was. It was a metal device with a cord and tray on top. The cord had two prongs on the end, but it was old and at one time it may even have had a third prong. In order to find out what the metal device was, they decided to plug it in and see what happened. The husband put the device on the floor of his living room, plugged the device into a wall socket, and bent over to pick it up to see how it worked.

The home they were renting was a very old house in a relatively low income neighborhood. It was obvious that the house wiring had been fixed and repaired many times, and there weren’t even any face plate on the wall sockets. When the husband bent over to pick up the metal device, he placed one hand on each side. Tragically he was unaware that there was an electrical short in the device, and by grabbing both sides at the same time, he became part of an electrical circuit. The electricity was stuck in a circuit passing through the device, and through the husband, whereby he couldn’t let go. He was immediately electrocuted, and eventually he fell to the ground and the device fell out of his hands. He was dead by the time the paramedics arrived.

Our firm hired experts on electrical wiring in the home as well as electrical device manufacturing to determine what happened and why. It turned out the device was actually a jewelry cleaner that was manufactured over thirty years ago. Because the plug did not have the third prong, he plugged in the cord upside down. If the wall socket had been wired properly, it wouldn’t have made any difference which way he plugged it in. But because of both errors, he was electrocuted and died. We held the manufacturer responsible for product liability and the landlord responsible for premises liability. We settled the case and were able to obtain a substantial six figure settlement for our client.