What Compensation Can I Get If a Defective Product Injured Me in Tulsa?

The space heater you bought from a big-box store in Tulsa caught fire at 2 a.m. Your child’s high chair collapsed during dinner. The power tool you used exactly as instructed shattered and drove a metal fragment into your hand.

You didn’t do anything wrong. The product did. And Oklahoma law gives you a significant legal advantage that most people don’t know about.

Oklahoma’s Strict Liability Advantage: What It Means for You

Most personal injury cases require you to prove that someone was negligent—that they failed to act reasonably. Product liability cases in Oklahoma work differently.

Oklahoma is a strict liability state for defective products. That means you don’t have to prove the manufacturer was careless. You don’t have to show they cut corners. You don’t need internal company emails proving they knew about the defect. You need to prove three things and three things only: the product was defective, the defect existed when it left the manufacturer’s control, and the defect caused your injury.

This principle comes from the landmark Oklahoma case Kirkland v. General Motors Corp., which established that a manufacturer who places a dangerous product into commerce is strictly liable to anyone injured by the defective condition. The Oklahoma Supreme Court made clear that consumers shouldn’t have to prove a company’s internal decision-making was flawed—just that the product itself was unreasonably dangerous.

Why this matters practically: In a car accident case, you spend months proving the other driver ran a red light or was texting. In a product liability case, the focus is on the product—not on the company’s internal behavior. That’s a fundamentally stronger legal position.

Does Comparative Negligence Reduce My Recovery in a Product Liability Case?

Here’s the single most important thing to understand about Oklahoma product liability law—and the thing that separates Oklahoma from most other states.

Oklahoma’s comparative negligence statute, §23-13, generally reduces your recovery in proportion to your fault. If you’re 30% at fault in a car wreck, you recover 70% of your damages.

But Oklahoma courts have consistently held that comparative negligence does not reduce a plaintiff’s recovery in a strict liability product liability action. Your ordinary negligence is not weighed against the manufacturer’s liability. The only defenses that can defeat your product liability claim are voluntary assumption of a known risk (you knew the product was defective and used it anyway) and misuse so extreme that the manufacturer couldn’t reasonably anticipate it.

In practice, this means the manufacturer can’t argue that you were “partly at fault” for your injury the way an insurance company would in a car accident case. Either the product was defective and caused your injury, or it wasn’t. The manufacturer’s defense is essentially all-or-nothing.

This is a massive advantage for injured consumers in Tulsa and across Oklahoma. It means that even if you were using the product in a slightly unconventional way—or even if you ignored a warning that was buried in a 40-page manual—the manufacturer can’t simply reduce your damages by assigning you a percentage of blame.

Three Types of Defects, Three Different Cases

Oklahoma law recognizes three types of product defects. Here’s what they actually look like in real cases:

Design defects mean the product’s blueprint is inherently dangerous—even if every unit is manufactured perfectly. A vehicle with a fuel tank positioned to rupture in a rear-end collision. A children’s toy with parts that detach during normal play. In Oklahoma, you must prove a safer alternative design existed that wouldn’t fundamentally alter the product’s purpose.

Manufacturing defects occur when a specific unit deviates from an otherwise safe design. A batch of tires made with substandard rubber. Medication contaminated during packaging. These cases hinge on expert analysis comparing the defective unit to the manufacturer’s own specifications.

Marketing defects (failure to warn) are about what the manufacturer didn’t tell you. Under Oklahoma’s Uniform Jury Instructions (OUJI No. 12.5), a product is defective if it lacks adequate warnings about dangers an ordinary user wouldn’t reasonably expect. The nuance: no warning is required if the danger would be apparent from the product’s nature. A knife doesn’t need a warning that it’s sharp.

The 2014 Tort Reform Presumption—and Its Limits

Oklahoma’s 2014 product liability statute created a rebuttable presumption that manufacturers are not liable if their product complied with federal premarket safety standards. This is the defense that corporate lawyers cite first.

But the presumption has significant limitations that those same lawyers hope you don’t discover. It can be rebutted by showing that federal standards were inadequate to protect the public, or that the manufacturer misrepresented its compliance during the regulatory process. And critically, the presumption does not apply to manufacturing defects at all—only to claims about formulation, labeling, or design.

So if the product was manufactured incorrectly—if the specific unit you bought deviated from the approved design—the federal compliance defense doesn’t help the manufacturer.

What Your Claim Is Actually Worth

Defective product injuries in Oklahoma can result in compensation across every major damages category:

Medical expenses and future treatment. Product defect injuries often involve burns, traumatic brain injuries, amputations, and spinal cord damage—injuries that require treatment for years or decades.

Lost income and earning capacity. Both past lost wages and permanent reductions in your ability to earn. A vocational economist can quantify lifetime losses that often represent the largest component of the claim.

Pain, suffering, and quality of life. Chronic pain from nerve damage, burn contractures, phantom limb pain—Oklahoma juries compensate real, persistent suffering from catastrophic injuries.

Punitive damages. Available when the manufacturer knew about the defect and chose profits over safety. Internal documents showing a cost-benefit analysis that prioritized savings over fixes can multiply the total recovery.

Wrongful death. If a defective product killed a loved one, Oklahoma’s wrongful death statute allows family members to pursue funeral costs, loss of companionship, and pre-death suffering.

Who You Can Hold Liable—and How Long You Have

Product liability cases can reach beyond the manufacturer. Oklahoma law allows claims against every entity in the chain of distribution—manufacturer, distributor, and in certain circumstances, the retailer. This matters when the manufacturer is a foreign company difficult to serve with a lawsuit, or when a distributor modified the product.

Oklahoma’s statute of limitations under §12-95 gives you two years from the date of injury. Product liability cases require engineering experts, metallurgical analysis, and extensive discovery—work that takes time. Preserve the product itself (do not throw it away or let it be repaired), photograph it from every angle, and contact an attorney immediately.

Our founding attorney Tye Smith has spent over 30 years pursuing product liability cases that forced manufacturers to make their products safer—not just a courtroom win for one client, but a change that protects every consumer next.

Why 222 Injury Lawyers Takes on Corporations

At 222 Injury Lawyers, we’ve recovered over $80 million for injured Oklahomans. Tye Smith has tried product liability cases across the state, including cases that persuaded manufacturers to change dangerous designs. We understand the science, the engineering, and the courtroom strategy these cases demand.

Our client McKenna Terrell said: “They go above and beyond to make sure all your questions are answered and that your needs are met.”

Contingency fee. No upfront cost. We don’t get paid unless you do.

If a defective product injured you in Tulsa or anywhere in Oklahoma, call for a free consultation. The manufacturer has a legal team. Now you need one too.