Whatever hurt you — don't send it back.

Product liability is different from most injury law in a way that works strongly in your favor: in most states you don't have to prove anyone was careless. You have to prove the product was defective, that the defect existed when it left the manufacturer's hands, and that it caused your injury. That's strict liability, and it exists because a company that puts a product into the market is better positioned than you are to catch its flaws.

In exchange for that lower bar, these cases are technical. They turn on engineering, on testing, on internal documents about what a company knew and when, and above all on physical evidence — the actual product that failed.

Which is why the most consequential moment in most product cases happens within days of the injury, before anyone has spoken to a lawyer. The manufacturer's customer service department calls. They're sympathetic. They offer a refund, a replacement, and a prepaid shipping label so they can investigate. It sounds like the responsible thing to do.

Send it and you have given away the only copy of the evidence. It does not reliably come back, and when it does it has frequently been disassembled. Keep the product. Keep the packaging, the manual, the receipt, and the serial number. That single decision decides more product cases than anything a lawyer does afterward.