I think that Computeruser has overstated the situation. I, too, am a lawyer and I have been defending products liability cases (frequently successfully) for over thirty-five years.
It was certainly a good deal harder to defend them back in the early 70s, but even then, if you could make a convincing showing that the manufacturer made reasonable efforts to anticipate and protect against serious injuries and that the particular accident was caused by the user's own carelessness or stupidity, and not a defect in the machine that it was feasible to correct, the manufacturer could win.
To be sure, juries back then probably felt sorrier for the "victim" than a lot of folks would now that there is a much more strongly felt view that people should take personal responsibility for accidents that are really their own fault.
In 1974 I had a jury come back with a defendant's verdict in the case of a worker who lost his right arm in a metal milling machine when he tried to clean the work area without shutting off the power. Some of the jurors had obviously been crying in the jury room, but they didn't give the plaintiff anything. That case would be a good deal easier to defend today and I doubt that many of the jurors would waste any tears before finding for the manufacturer.
So, all is not lost, folks. Largely because of the views of people like the contributors to this thread, I think that most of the time, if a plaintiff wants to collect for an injury, it isn't going to be "easy money" and he'd better be prepared to show that there was really something wrong with the machine, and not with his own care or common sense.
Of course, we have all read newspaper accounts of the occasional aberrations. They get all the media play because they are so outrageous. But from the point of view of one who fights these battles frequently, most of the time, the system works at least as well, and responsibly, as most other human institutions, including the management of business corporations.
Another way to look at it is: all those "clever lawyers" aren't fooling the folks on this forum --do you really believe that they are fooling everyone else??
Just my $.02