DEFECTIVE PRODUCTS
PRODUCTS LIABILITY

Products liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause.

In the United States, the claims most commonly associated with product liability are negligence, strict liability, breach of warranty, and various consumer protection claims. The majority of product liability laws are determined at the state level and vary widely from state to state. Each type of product liability claim requires different elements to be proven to present a successful claim.
 

Products Liability and Negligence

A products liability claim is usually based on one or more of the following causes of action:

• design defect

• manufacturing defect

• a failure to warn
   

The claims may succeed even when products were used incorrectly by the consumer, as long as the incorrect use was foreseeable by the manufacturer (or other party in the "supply chain").

In general, products liability claims are based not on negligence, but rather on strict liability. Under the theory of strict liability, a manufacturer is held liable regardless of whether it acted negligently. It allows recovery for an injured customer who might be in a difficult position to prove what a manufacturer did or did not do in its design or manufacturing process. It is presumed that a manufacturer with its deep pockets may be better situated to absorb the cost of liability and would consider such expense in setting price for its products.

Some legal commentators consider claims of failure to warn to be based on negligence.

A basic negligence claim consists of proof of

• a duty owed

• a breach of that duty

• an injury

• that the breach caused the plaintiff's injury.
   

Over time, negligence concepts have arisen to deal with certain specific situations, including negligence per se (using a manufacturer's violation of a law or regulation in place of proof of a duty and a breach) and res ipsa loquitur (an inference of negligence under certain conditions).


Products Liability and Strict Liability
Products liability claims are, in general, not based on negligence, but rather on a liability theory called "strict liability."

Rather than focus on the behavior of the manufacturer (as in negligence), strict liability claims focus on the product itself. Under strict liability, the manufacturer is liable if the product is defective, even if the manufacturer was not negligent in making that product defective. Because strict liability is a harsh regime for a manufacturer, who is forced to pay for all injuries caused by his products, even if he is not at fault, strict liability is applied only to manufacturing defects (when a product varies from its intended design) and almost never applied to design and warning defects. The first case to openly discuss the application of strict liability to manufacturing defects involved an exploding Coca-Cola bottle (though the case actually upheld the plaintiff's res ipsa loquitur theory).

There is some confusion in judicial opinions as to whether strict liability is being applied in cases of design and warning defects. The courts may even state that they are applying strict liability. However, when the court proclaims to apply strict liability while determining product's defectiveness through the use of a consumer expectations test or risk-utility test, it is applying the negligence principles and not strict liability. Although the tests are not based on the conduct of the manufacturer, rather focusing on the product itself, they attempt to determine if the product's design or warning is reasonable. It is widely known that reasonableness is the staple of negligence, not strict liability.

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