ABSTRACT
Produdt Liability refers to civil liability for injuries caused by defective products. The most frequently cited public policy reason of Product Liability Law is that ensures the costs arising from injuries caused by defective products fall ...
ABSTRACT
Produdt Liability refers to civil liability for injuries caused by defective products. The most frequently cited public policy reason of Product Liability Law is that ensures the costs arising from injuries caused by defective products fall on manufacturers and sellers rather than injured consumers who are powerless to protect themselves.
It is typically characterized strict liability because these do not consider the conduct of manufacturer or seller in having prepared, packaged, designed, sold, labeled, or marketed the product. Instead of conduct, the focus of the strict liability inquiry is the product itself and whether the product was defective.
Plaintiffs principally pursue one of three strict liability actions against manufacturers or sellers of defective products for defective manufacturing, defective design, defective warnings. Design defects are flaws in the specifications of the product, which renders defective an entire line, model, series of the product. Unlike manufacturing defects, defective designs manifest themselves in the specifications for the product and not in the product itself.
Generally we have recognized the consumer expectations and the risk-utility tests as standards by which may determine the existence of a defective design.
Product may be found defective in design, so as to subject a manufacturer to strict liability for resulting injures, under either of two alternative tests. First, a product may be found defective in design if the plaintiff establishes that the product failed to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect when used in an intended or reasonably foreseeable manner, specially in that they have low social utility and high degree of danger, circumstantial evidence supporting inference of product defect. Second, a product may alternatively be found defective in design if the plaintiff demonstrates that the product''s design proximately caused his injury and the defendent fails to establish, in light of the relevant factors, that, on balance, the benefits of the challenged design outweigh the risk of danger inherent in such design.
A Product is defective in design when the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product could have been reduced or avoided by the adoption of a reasonable alternative design and the omission of the alternative design renders the product not safe. A broad range of factors may be considered in determining whether an alternative design is reasonable and whether its omission renders a product not resonably safe.
We create a distinction between negligence and strict liability by using hindsight rather than foresight to impute knowledge of risk to the manufacturer. However the issue is not simple. The question is whether products will be judged in the light of the knowledge and technology available at the time of manufacturing or distribution(foresight) or at the time of trial(hindsight).
The manufacturer might not know of a generic risk, of a risk created by the misuse of the product, of a risk created by unusal circumstances, of technology that will reduce a known risk.
In design defect cases U.S. courts in most jurisdictions hold that justifiable ignorance of generic risk does not excuse the manufacturers(hindsight). Yet, there are very powerful restrictions on the use of hindsight in cases involving scientifically unknowable generic risk. First, the great majority of U.S. courts use foresight rather than hindsight in warning defect cases. Second, most U.S. courts exempt drugs and medical devices from strict liability.
The failure of anticipate an accident caused by unforseeable misuse of the product, is covered, U.S. courts apply foresight here, holding manufacturers liable only for harm out of intended use or foreseeable use.
About the changes in technology, U.S. all courts use foresight there, requiring manufacturers to use the best technology that was either available at the time of manufacture or that could have been developed at that time by an expert in the field. They do not hold manufacturers liable for failing to use technology available at the time of trial if it was impossible to have developed that technology at the time of manufacture.
Smith case is typical that apply the risk-utility test rigorously, carefully weighing costs and benefits in deciding whether plaintiff''s evidence of a safer alternative design is sufficient. Other U.S. courts take a much softer approach in applying the risk-utility test, regarding the existence of a safer alternative design as simply one of several factors(not elements) that are relevant in determining defectiveness.
O''Brien case differs from the other cases in that it recognizes that a product can be defective because its risks outweigh its utility even though there is no safer alternative design.(O''Brien theory)
Bexiga case is that a manufacturer has a non-delegable duty to install necessary safety devices. This means that the manufacturer is liable if it sells the product without a necessary device even if it reasonably believes that some subsequent owner will install the device, even the removal of the safety device is specifically requested by the purchaser(Hammond case).
Some multi-functional machinery cannot be equipped with a single guard fo safety system that will work effectively with all functions. Therefore, different types of safeguards must be installed, depending on how the machine is to be used.(option theory) U.S. courts have dealt with this problem in a variety ways.
Like Mott case, a completed product is frequently the product of multiple entities'' contributions, including raw materials, manufactured component parts, design, and assembly. We must determine responsibility for the absence of a safety device by looking primarily to at least three factors, trade custom, relative expertises, practicality.