Products Liability in a Nutshell
Author:
Owen, David G.
Edition:
10th
Copyright Date:
2023
23 chapters
have results for "products liability"
Chapter 5 Strict Liability in Tort 71 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The doctrine of strict liability in tort is widely considered the predominant basis of recovery in modern products liability law. Indeed, the development and growth of the doctrine of strict products liability in tort was the centerpiece around which the rest of modern products liability law was formed. This chapter describes the origins, evolution, nature, rationales, tests, and decline of the doctrine of strict products liability in tort, particularly under § 402A of the
- A number of states took a rather independent route from the start of modern products liability law, refusing simply to “adopt” § 402A yet adhering to the general principles of the developing jurisprudence on strict products liability in tort. For example, Oklahoma adopted an elaborate doctrine of strict products liability in tort, called “Manufacturers’ Products Liability”; Alabama adopted its own “Alabama Extended Manufacturer’s Liability Doctrine (AEMLD)”; and Louisiana, New York, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania also followed different drummers in adopting and developing their doctrines of strict products liability in tort.
- Most states embraced the doctrine of strict products liability in tort by judicial “adoption” of § 402A. Since those adoptions, however, products liability jurisprudence has moved far beyond the original formulation of the doctrine as described in § 402A, and many states have altered their original approaches to § 402A over time.
- Three products liability statutes (Ill., N.H., Ohio) were struck down as unconstitutional by their state supreme courts, though Ohio later enacted a revised set of products liability statutes.
- Despite its internal logic and respect for the hybrid origin of strict products liability in tort (in tort and warranty), commentators widely were unkind to
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Chapter 17 Automotive Vehicles 15 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Automotive products liability cases in many ways are like other types of products liability cases. But certain issues that may control the outcome of an automotive products liability case—crashworthiness, damages apportionment, the role of plaintiff fault, and autonomous driver assistance features—involve special considerations. This chapter explores the most important, recurring, special issues in automotive products liability law. For a more thorough examination of products liability issues in vehicular litigation, see Owen,
- The general role of plaintiff fault in products liability litigation, including the defenses of contributory negligence, assumption of risk, product misuse, and comparative fault, was previously considered, in chapter 13. But courts and legislatures have encountered a few special issues involving the fault of drivers and other plaintiffs in automotive products liability cases.
- Many commentators have speculated on how products liability law should apply to accidents in which autonomous vehicles are involved. At this undeveloped stage of vehicular autonomy, and because the nature and domain of federal and state regulation has still to be worked out, little useful can be said about the extent to which federal law may eventually preempt state products liability law.
- Many products liability cases involve claims against manufacturers of cars, sport utility vehicles, vans, trucks, motorcycles, and other motor vehicles alleging that defective conditions in such products caused injuries to the plaintiffs. The usual victims in such accidents are the drivers and passengers in the allegedly defective vehicles, but sometimes an accident vehicle injures someone in another vehicle or a pedestrian. There are two major types of automotive products liability cases:
- Many automotive products liability cases involve accidents that allegedly result from some defect in the vehicle. Most such cases involve claims of defects in one of the vehicle’s essential control mechanisms or components, such as its steering, brakes, engine, transmission, acceleration or suspension system, wheels, or tires.
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Chapter 1 Introduction 70 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Today, products liability occupies a central role in American law: products liability litigation and product safety figure prominently in corporate and legal decisionmaking as plaintiffs’ lawyers across the nation file tens of thousands of products liability suits each year. In an effort to prevent and manage such high stakes litigation, many major corporations and law firms have established separate teams or departments for products liability matters. In short, products liability now ranks as one of the most important fields of law.
- The roots of modern products liability law reach deep into history, beyond the law of ancient Rome at least to the law of Mesopotamia. The early origins of products liability law mostly reside in the tort-contract hybrid warranties of quality, both express and implied, although there are early signs of seller liability in negligence as well. However, as a broad and coherent set of legal principles for the recovery of product-caused harm, products liability law is of recent origin. With the exception of a few cases involving fraud and the sale of defective medicines and food, the appearance of products liability cases in the law reports coincides with the rise of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. By 1900, such cases had begun to appear with some frequency. Yet, as late as the early 1950s, “products liability” was not even a term of art, much less a field of law.
- When manufacturers and insurers first began to feel the impact of modern products liability law in practice during the 1970s, they began to push for its “reform,” arguing that the products liability system had developed certain excesses that unfairly increased liability at the expense of everyone except plaintiffs and their lawyers. From the late 1970s, products liability reform efforts began to take center stage in many state legislatures, the United States Congress, the courts themselves, federal regulatory agencies (like the FDA, in the early 2000s), and the ALI. In 1996, President Clinton vetoed an act of Congress that would have significantly altered certain aspects of this area of the law at the federal level, and Congress periodically (if infrequently) continues to address selected issues of products liability and safety. In 1998, the ALI provided products liability with its own
- In recent years, products liability law has gone global. Japan and many other nations outside Europe have enacted (or introduced) “clones” of the which is rapidly becoming the worldwide model for products liability legislation outside the United States. And many other nations in recent years have otherwise modernized their products liability laws.
- Frumer, Friedman, and Sklaren, Products Liability.
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Chapter 8 Design Defects 14 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The design defect concept lies at the heart of products liability law. Just as strict liability in tort remains the dominant liability theory in major products liability litigation, design defectiveness is the dominant claim in most major products liability cases. Yet, finding an acceptable definition of a “design defect” has long proved a difficult task.
- Prior to the development of strict products liability in tort, courts applying strict liability in ) searched for a foundation for the new doctrine of strict products liability in
- Evolving separately from the law of warranty and the law of negligence, the consumer expectations and risk-utility tests of design defectiveness developed largely as rival theories of design defect liability. Later, however, reflecting the combined warranty-tort heritage of products liability law, and because of inadequacies in consumer expectations as an exclusive liability standard, many courts combined the two tests in one way or another.
- Products Liability Restatement
- , and the optional safety device issue remains one of the most elusive problems in products liability law.
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Chapter 12 Proximate Cause 11 results (showing 5 best matches)
- By whatever name, proximate cause is an elemental requirement of every products liability claim. In applying proximate cause “principles,” products liability law draws from the law of negligence. In the early days of modern products liability law, in an effort to distinguish the then-new doctrine of strict products liability in tort from negligence, some courts and commentators sought to eliminate the proximate cause limitations of negligence law (principally, the limitation of responsibility to foreseeable risks) from the strict tort doctrine. In time, however, this effort proved futile, and proximate cause (with its foreseeability limitations) is alive and well today as an element of claims for negligence, breach of warranty, strict products liability in tort, and even fraud. For a more thorough examination of proximate cause, see Owen,
- scope” of a product’s foreseeable risks. Viewed this way, the central question of proximate cause in a products liability case is whether the risks that caused a plaintiff’s harm were among the foreseeable risks that made the defendant negligent or its product defective.
- Thus, the safety obligations of manufacturers and other suppliers in products liability law are limited by principles of reasonable foreseeability. More specifically, in making design and warning choices, a manufacturer is expected to contemplate and fairly evaluate risks—and only such risks—to such persons as are reasonably foreseeable. The range of risks and persons to be foreseen include how a product may be used, how it may be misused, and the ways in which these risks may endanger users and other persons.
- Simple “foreseeability” for many years has been crowding out other competing “tests” for proximate cause, most of which have a quaint appearance of times gone by. Yet other proximate cause tests that long have challenged foreseeability in the law of negligence compete as well in the products liability arena. So, courts still sometimes use the “direct consequences” test of . A variation on this formulation, the “natural and probable consequences” test, is sometimes referred to in products liability decisions. See
- Often noted (and usually decried), the malleability and opaqueness of the foreseeability “test” for proximate cause has significant implications for lawyers litigating products liability as other tort law cases. Foreseeability becomes a vessel into which a lawyer—in arguing either to a jury or the judge—can pour any number of equitable considerations present in the case but that really have no doctrinal home. In this respect, the doctrine of proximate cause, defined in terms of foreseeable risk, can be an especially powerful arrow in a lawyer’s quiver of legal tools.
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Chapter 16 Special Transactions and Products 38 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Some products liability litigation involves transactions other than the typical , the paradigm around which most products liability law is centered. The principal issue examined here is whether the usual principles of products liability law, particularly the doctrine of strict liability, should be extended from the new chattel sale situation to contexts where other policies and principles may predominate. In some of these situations, the differing objectives and doctrinal borders of products liability, premises liability, professional malpractice, public health, free speech, and other areas of the law are brought into sharp
- Products Liability Restatement
- Products liability law conventionally is defined as the liability of suppliers for harm from defects in property. So, real estate, including any fixtures attached to it, would not appear to be a proper subject of “products” liability law. Probably most courts thus refuse to apply strict products liability in tort to claims involving defects in land, houses, and most other structures attached to the land. See (strict products liability inapplicable to movie theater seats that were “a structural improvement” to real property);
- Consumers and businesses are shifting to some extent away from purchasing various types of products, most notably automobiles, toward lease transactions. In general, products liability principles that govern a supplier’s
- Products liability reform statutes often address lease, bailment, and license transactions directly or indirectly. A popular type of statutory provision exempts non-manufacturing product suppliers from strict liability if the manufacturer is solvent and subject to the jurisdiction of the court.
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Chapter 14 Special Defenses 26 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Federal preemption is an important issue that products liability lawyers need to keep constantly in mind. The first thing a lawyer should do in any particular products liability case is to determine if the courts have addressed the preemptive effect of a federal safety statute or federal safety agency regulation that might concern the pertinent product. If the courts have not yet spoken on this issue, the lawyer must ascertain whether the pertinent products liability claims would contravene either an express preemption clause or the purposes of the particular Act of Congress. This is often a daunting task, but it is assisted by a growing body of jurisprudence specific to particular product safety statutes and specific products liability claims.
- State statutes and administrative regulations are of course governed by the Supremacy Clause, but so too are products liability actions that can interfere, if less directly, with the administration of a federal safety statute or regulation. In determining whether a products liability claim conflicts with federal law, courts must interpret the statute to ascertain its aims. Congressional intent, divined by statutory construction, is thus the cornerstone of preemption analysis.
- Products liability defenses may be broadly divided into three categories:
- , and by the judicial products liability system, . For example, manufacturers of industrial machines must conform to safety standards of a federal agency (OSHA), to the standards of each state’s industrial safety commission, and, finally, to a state’s standards of product defectiveness. If such a product causes harm and ends up as the subject of a products liability case in court, its manufacturer may fairly question the logic and fairness of being required to conform to safety regulations imposed by the government’s executive/administrative branch
- Federal preemption is an affirmative defense that arises, and a products liability claim is foreclosed, when the claim somehow conflicts with a federal product safety statute or regulation specifying design, marketing, or manufacturing standards.
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Chapter 2 Negligence 18 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Restatement (3d) of Torts: Products Liability
- Thus, in an increasing number of states, negligence principles are returning to the law of products liability as the dominant (and sometimes exclusive) tort law standard of liability in design and warning cases. Endorsed by the
- Negligence has been the classic claim in American products liability law for a century, and it remains a fundamentally important theory of recovery. Even as its doctrinal significance slipped into the shadows as various “strict” theories of manufacturer liability pushed to center stage in recent decades, negligence retained a prominent place in the developing law of modern products liability. Negligence is still the principal theory of tort recovery in the states that chose not to adopt strict products liability in tort (Del., Mass., Mich., N.C., and Va.). In states that do recognize such strict liability claims, empirical studies show that juries—perhaps because negligence is “hotter” than strict liability—are more likely to find for plaintiffs, and in higher amounts, in negligence rather than in strict liability.
- To prove any products liability claim sounding in negligence, a plaintiff must establish: (1) that the seller owed a duty to the plaintiff; (2) that the seller breached that duty; (3) that the breach of duty was a cause in fact of the plaintiff’s injury; (4) that the cause in fact was a proximate cause of the injury; and (5) that the damages sought for the harm suffered are recoverable in negligence. The first two elements are explored in this chapter, and the last three elements are examined in later chapters. For a more thorough look at negligence, see Owen,
- In adopting strict liability in tort during the 1960s and 1970s, many courts stated or suggested that the new strict products liability doctrine eliminated the need for a separate theory of liability in negligence. But as courts applied the new “strict” products liability doctrine in an expanding array of contexts, they increasingly recognized that liability for design and warning defects is best defined in negligence principles, centered on a balance of foreseeable risk, cost, utility, reasonableness, and optimality.
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Chapter 7 Manufacturing Defects 8 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Manufacturing defects—flaws or irregularities in products arising from errors in production—give rise to the most basic type of products liability claim. The law governing production errors is now quite settled, and it fairly may be viewed as the first pillar of modern products liability law. In general, manufacturers and other suppliers are liable for injuries caused by manufacturing defects in products that they sell.
- In earlier times, most products liability cases for manufacturing defects were brought in negligence, including , discussed above. Indeed, until the development of the doctrine of strict products liability in tort in the 1960s, most products liability cases were manufacturing defect cases brought in negligence. Because negligence is more difficult to prove than strict liability in manufacturing defect cases, negligence claims in such cases are less common today than formerly. Nevertheless, negligent manufacturing (including negligent testing and quality control) remains a viable basis of products liability recovery in almost every state.
- Having spread across the nation with little fanfare over the last half century, the malfunction doctrine has become a well-established precept of modern products liability law. A substantial and growing majority of American jurisdictions (usually the “malfunction doctrine” label) now accept this principle of circumstantial evidence for proving defect and cause in strict products liability cases. Certifying its widespread acceptance, the Products
- The quality control process is designed to catch such manufacturing mistakes, but sometimes it fails to do so. And while insufficient quality assurance may provide the basis for a claim of negligence, a manufacturer’s failure to adequately inspect or test its products is not itself a strict products liability claim. For a more thorough examination of manufacturing defects, see Owen,
- Manufacturing defects may generate any number of products liability claims. For example, a manufacturer may misrepresent the purity of its products or a supplier of contaminated food or drink may be negligent per se for violating a pure food statute. More commonly, a seller of a defectively manufactured product is subject to liability under one or more of the three primary products liability theories of recovery—negligence, breach of implied warranty, and strict liability in tort.
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Chapter 13 User Conduct Defenses 27 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The classic conduct defenses to products liability negligence claims are . With the advent of the modern doctrine of strict products liability in tort during the 1960s and 1970s, most jurisdictions added the new “defense” of product
- Contributory negligence is the conventional common-law defense to products liability negligence claims. In the products liability context, as in others, contributory negligence is defined as conduct of a plaintiff which falls below the standard of reasonable behavior required for a person’s own protection that proximately contributes, together with a defendant’s negligence or other breach of duty, to cause the plaintiff’s harm.
- and continued to apply the traditional elements of assumption of risk (a voluntary encounter of a known and appreciated risk) even for claims brought in strict products liability in tort. Yet many jurisdictions adopted comment ’s approach of restricting the availability of the assumption of risk defense in strict products liability in tort to cases of
- Assumption of risk is a classic defense in products liability litigation, even to claims for strict products liability in tort, and it remains a total bar to liability in a fair number of states. Its underlying idea is that a user may fully consent to incur a risk that he or she fully comprehends. By choosing voluntarily to incur the risk, the user thus implicitly agrees to accept
- How a plaintiff’s misconduct affects liability in warranty is one of the most confused issues in all of products liability law. The issue examined here is what the effect should be, on a claim for breach of express or implied warranty against a product seller, if a plaintiff uses a product in a careless manner, ignores warnings or instructions, deliberately and unreasonably engages a product danger, or puts a product to an unforeseeably dangerous use. While the developing warranty law on these questions in some states roughly parallels the law applied in strict products liability in tort, the law on warranty misconduct defenses teeters on the edge of chaos.
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Chapter 6 Nature and Proof of Defectiveness 23 results (showing 5 best matches)
- At least implicitly, each of the three major causes of action in products liability law requires that the product be defective. Negligence claims are predicated on the defectiveness of a product, because its supplier ordinarily cannot be faulted for selling a product that is good (i.e., not defective). The implied warranty of merchantability is breached if a product is “unfit” for ordinary use, meaning essentially the same thing as “defective.” And strict liability in tort, of course, explicitly rests on the sale of a defective product. The centrality of the concept of defectiveness to products liability law is reflected in the , both of which ground liability on the notion of product defect. Quite simply, product defectiveness is the heart of products liability law. For a more thorough examination of product defectiveness, see Owen,
- The explosion of expert testimony in products liability litigation during the 1970s and 1980s, fueled by an expanding plaintiffs’ bar fed by contingent fees, quite naturally led to a rather rapid increase of products liability lawsuits based on novel, untested, abstract, and occasionally quite fantastic theories of science and technology propounded by “experts” who sometimes were dubiously qualified to testify on issues about which they claimed expertise. As products liability litigation during this period marched along, some courts and commentators, often skeptical of this form of witness, increasingly decried a perceived growth in abuses of expert testimony—of “junk science” run amok.
- Since § 402A first roughly sketched out a general doctrine of strict products liability in tort, the need for separate treatment of issues distinctive to each of these very different defects has become a well-accepted axiom. Today, that the three separate types of defect create independent sets of obligations is a fundamental premise of American products liability law. See Prod. Liab. Rest. § 2.
- § 402A was about a quarter century old, the American Law Institute (ALI) decided once again to “restate” the law of Torts, beginning with products liability law. Authored by Reporters Professors Jim Henderson and Aaron Twerski (and edited by another professor with extraordinary grace and skill), the ALI published the
- Restatement (3d) of Torts: Products Liability.
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Chapter 18 Drugs and Medical Devices 18 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Because the answer to the question posed above was that products liability law indeed plays a crucial role when people are harmed by defects in pharmaceuticals and medical devices, we must ask whether the ordinary rules of products liability law should be applied in drug and device cases as they are in other contexts, or whether the legal principles need to be adjusted to fit the context of these special types of products. While some scholars believe that consumer protection requires application of the full array of conventional products liability principles to medical products, the law has long and broadly recognized that many pharmaceuticals and certain other medical products are indeed fundamentally different from other types of products—a distinction that requires a variety of nuanced adjustments to ordinary principles of products liability law when they are put to use in this special context. See
- The question of interest here is what role, if any, does the American medico-legal system leave for the law of torts and products liability? Because the system just described breaks down in many ways in practice, revealing many weaknesses, the answer to the question must be that products liability law—putting aside for now the substantial constraints of federal preemption, see § 14.5, above—has a vital role to play in compensating persons harmed unnecessarily by
- The next two sections address the role of design defects and warning defects in products liability litigation involving prescription drugs and, to a lesser extent, medical devices. The inquiry reveals that most courts, commentators, and the agree that the principles of products liability law should be specially crafted to help assure that doctors and (usually indirectly) patients receive adequate warnings of drug dangers, and instructions on how to avoid them, and that judicial reevaluations of prescription drug designs should be limited.
- Courts have long been befuddled in how products liability principles should apply to prescription drugs and, to a lesser extent, medical devices. In addition to featuring two prominent
- The Role of Products Liability Law
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Chapter 10 Limitations on Defectiveness 27 results (showing 5 best matches)
- As products liability litigation spread around the nation, some courts adopted the Wade-Keeton hindsight test for defining strict products liability in tort. At the same time, however, courts continued to turn to comments
- , the two most important judicial decisions in modern products liability history likely are for they present a microcosm of the rise and fall of strict products liability in this nation. was the first significant case in the United States applying the Wade-Keeton test and other principles of strict products liability to a warning claim defended on the ground that the risk was unforeseeable. That is, this was the first state supreme court decision squarely confronting the question whether manufacturers should be liable for failing to warn of unknowable product risks.
- In products liability law, “state of the art” is an unrefined concept whose meaning and proper role continue to evolve. Nevertheless, emerging from the cases and statutes is a common theme: reluctance to impose liability on manufacturers for dangers that were unknowable, or otherwise unpreventable, at the time their products were sold—reluctance to hold producers responsible for risks they cannot control.
- A handful of decisions still agree, including at least a couple of courts that have reaffirmed their commitment to truly “strict” products liability that is uncontaminated by principles of foreseeability, fault, negligence, or state of the art. See (state-of-the-art defense raises issues of reasonableness and foreseeability that are contrary to core principles of modern products liability law);
- doctrine of strict manufacturer liability for warning (and indirectly design) defects—in American products liability law. For a time, ’s moment in the sun was brief, and its fall from glory was complete and spectacular. Today, New Jersey’s products liability statute defines an adequate warning as one that a reasonably prudent person would provide; and it conditions liability for a design defect on the availability of a feasible alternative design at the time of manufacture.
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Chapter 15 Special Defendants 24 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Products Liability Restatement
- Normally, if an employee is injured on the job by an unguarded punch press or a defective tire blowout, the employee may recover both workers’ compensation benefits from the employer and damages in a products liability action from the product’s manufacturer (subject to a damages offset). But if the product manufacturer is also the employee’s employer, the question is whether the injured employee may maintain a typical products liability action against the company in its capacity as manufacturer; or whether, on the other hand, the employee is limited to workers’ compensation benefits as the “exclusive remedy” for such injuries.
- , which allowed tort claims against an employer, had an intriguing yet short and narrow life in products liability law. In , an appellate court first applied the dual capacity doctrine to a products liability case. While driving a company truck equipped with Uniroyal tires, a Uniroyal employee was injured when a tire blew out. Relying on cases from other contexts, and reasoning that “[i]t was only a matter of circumstance that the tire on the truck in which the plaintiff was riding was a Uniroyal tire rather than a Sears, Goodyear or Goodrich,” the court allowed the Uniroyal employee to maintain a products liability action against his employer. Twelve days later, a California appellate court similarly extended the dual capacity doctrine to the products liability context. See
- Many cases involving miscellaneous defendants address the issue of whether the particular type of defendant is subject to strict products liability in tort or liability for breach of warranty. Because most secondary participants in product marketing do not design, manufacture, market, or sell products to consumers, they generally are subject to strict products liability, either in tort or warranty. Such defendants ordinarily neither “sell” nor “otherwise distribute” such products, as variously required for
- Yet legislative reformers have questioned the fairness of holding retailers strictly liable for design and other defects over which they have no control, such as the uncrashworthy design of an automobile sold first by a manufacturer and then by a retail dealer. This has led to the enactment of reform statutes in many states that shield retail dealers and other non-manufacturing distributors from some or all forms of strict products liability. A number of statutes follow the
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Chapter 9 Warning Defects 9 results (showing 5 best matches)
- addresses the obligations of a supplier to warn in the law of negligence, most courts also apply its principles to the duty to warn in strict products liability.
- The surprisingly little debate on this important issue in judicial decisions may reflect the deep English-only tradition that has long prevailed in America, a nation that is geographically isolated from most other cultures. But the world is rapidly going global, as is the law of products liability, and various branches of American government (including courts) increasingly will need to address the multi-lingual question.
- Perhaps the most widely accepted goal of products liability law is
- Lurking within the duty to warn lies a paradox: The duty to warn is at once the most important, yet least effective, duty in the law of products liability. Its importance lies in its respect for the autonomy of consumers, as discussed above, together with its promotion of utility by helping to reduce the level of unnecessary product accidents. Its ineffectiveness springs from how easy it is to assert a warnings claim, even if unjustified; how elusive such claims are to rationally adjudicate; and what little impact warnings may have on product safety—since mounting studies reveal that they often are ignored. If this latter point is true, if most warnings and instructions truly are ignored, then a manufacturer’s duty to warn and instruct may be mostly sound and fury, signifying little.
- § 2(c), and under state products liability reform statutes—centers on one central issue: whether the seller included “adequate” warnings and instructions with a product, provided there was a reasonable way to convey that information. If so, a defendant has fulfilled its duty to warn; if not, it has breached its duty and is subject to liability for resulting physical harm. Thus, regardless of the liability theory, the principal standard or “test” of liability for warning claims is “adequacy,” rooted in reasonableness.
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Chapter 3 Tortious Misrepresentation 7 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Misrepresentation is the communication of false or misleading information to another. A tortious misrepresentation claim may arise in a products liability context if a manufacturer or other seller makes a false and material statement of fact about a product to a person who is harmed by reasonably relying on the truth of that communication.
- The action of intentional misrepresentation or “deceit,” commonly referred to as “fraud,” figures prominently (if not frequently) in modern American products liability litigation, often in claims against cigarette manufacturers. Although the precise specification of elements varies from state to state, most courts agree that they in substance include the following:
- Products Liability Law
- A plaintiff’s prima facie claim for negligent misrepresentation, a fairly uncommon claim in products liability cases, closely resembles the claim for intentional misrepresentation, except that the elements of duty and negligence replace the element of fraudulent intent. See
- The classic case widely credited with paternity of the doctrine of strict products liability in tort for misrepresentation is
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Chapter 11 Cause in Fact 10 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Most causation problems involving multiple products liability defendants concern injuries caused by toxic substances, and methods for establishing causation in that type of litigation were just examined. Yet problems arising from a multiplicity of actual or possible causal agents extend beyond toxic substance litigation, so that multiple defendant causation issues arise more generally.
- A very few courts have applied some form of alternative liability to certain multiple-defendant products liability situations. But the alternative liability theory presumes that there are only two or a small number of defendants who are all before the court, and that the defendants are likely to know who among them caused the harm, conditions which reduce the unfairness of shifting to the defendants the burden of establishing causation. Because these conditions normally are absent in litigation on DES and many other products, the alternative liability theory was rejected by the California Supreme Court in , as it has been rejected by many other courts in various contexts in products liability litigation.
- As with other types of products liability claims, factual causation is a necessary element of a warning defect claim. No matter how dangerous a defective warning may make a product, a plaintiff must prove that the absence of that safety information caused the plaintiff’s injury. In warning cases, like most others, the plaintiff ordinarily must prove causation by the but-for test—that the accident probably would not have occurred but for the absence of an adequate warning. If the provision of an adequate warning would have made no difference—if the plaintiff probably would have been injured anyway—then a warning claim will fail on causation grounds.
- Tracing injuries and illnesses to asbestos fibers, drugs, and other kinds of chemicals and toxic substances involves perplexing causation problems both in science and the law, and the substantial-factor test previously mentioned helps plaintiffs in only limited ways. While the but-for test remains at the center of the causal inquiry, courts in toxic substance cases necessarily draw from scientific notions of causation to help determine causation. Yet causation is established very differently in science than in law, which often causes a clash between these disciplines when toxic substance causation issues arise in products liability cases. Because the causal issues in such litigation are so arcane, expert testimony is almost always necessary and sits at the center of most toxic substance disputes.
- Products Liability Law
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Center Title 1 result
Index 16 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability. Defectiveness, this index
- Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability, 227–228
- Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability, 222–223
- Definition. Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability, below
- Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability, 223, 274–277, 560–562
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Chapter 4 Warranty 17 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Warranty law concerns the legal obligations arising from assertions in sales transactions. In the products liability context, warranty law prescribes the effect of assertions in transferring a product for value, usually by a sale. Such assertions may be express, by a seller’s affirmative statements about a product’s qualities, or implied by the nature of the transaction. For various reasons, such as a statute of limitations (4 years from sale) that normally is longer than tort law ( , warranty claims are an important part of modern products liability litigation.
- In contrast to most products liability law, which today is generally based in tort, the law of warranty ordinarily is conceived as part of the modern law of contract. A few states that never did adopt the doctrine of strict liability in tort for the sale of defective products (Del., Mass., Mich., N.C., Va.) have constructed much of their modern products liability jurisprudence on an implied warranty of quality. Yet much of the common-law “warranty” doctrine in such states has been patterned after the developed tort law jurisprudence of
- Two issues often predominate in products liability cases involving the fitness warranty: (1) the seller’s knowledge, and (2) the buyer’s reliance.
- for consumer products liability litigation involving personal injuries:
- Thus, in this one section, Congress has employed the Commerce and Supremacy Clauses of the United States Constitution to remove the deadliest arrow in a manufacturer’s quiver of contractual defenses in products liability warranty litigation.
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Prefacev 3 results
- Products Liability in a Nutshell
- The inquiry here focuses on the central features of products liability law, including the grounds of liability; definitions and proof of product defects; pertinent rules for expert testimony, including important Supreme Court decisions and changes in the Federal Rules of Evidence; how courts and legislatures deal with the perplexing issue of “state of the art”; how the jurisprudence on federal preemption, particularly in the Supreme Court, affects this field of law; the variety of other affirmative defenses; recent developments in special types of litigation, involving such products as alcohol, tobacco, asbestos, opioids, lead paint, fast foods, automotive vehicles, prescription drugs and medical devices; and various changes wrought by the
- , Products Liability Law
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- Publication Date: November 29th, 2022
- ISBN: 9781647087159
- Subject: Products Liability
- Series: Nutshells
- Type: Overviews
- Description: This book provides an overview of products liability law, explaining its essential history, developments, policies, and tensions succinctly yet comprehensively. An abridgment of Professor Owen’s acclaimed hornbook treatise, this short work examines classic and recent case and legislative developments in this field of law, including theories of liability; definitions and proof of product defects; standards for expert testimony; various features that mark the decline of strict liability; federal preemption and other defenses; and the Products Liability Restatement. Among many other topics, coverage includes claims against Amazon for “selling” defective third-party products, cases involving electronic and biologic products, and key features of automotive and pharmaceutical litigation.