Products Liability
Products, like people, occasionally fail. When they do, often serious injuries result. California law has a longstanding ‘strict liability’ rule for defective products that result in injury, and the chain of distribution, from manufacturer, to distributor, to retailer has for years insured that an individual injured as a result of such defect will be fairly compensated.
Manufacturers of products in the United States must comply with rigid governmental rules and regulations pertaining to the safety of products they put on the market. China, and many of the developing nations in the world have little or no such constraints, and we have seen the consequences of those unregulated products worldwide.
California holds that products liability defendants are strictly liable for the harm caused by a product with a manufacturing defect, design defect or inadequate warnings of a known hazard arising out of the foreseeable use of such product.
Manufacturing defects occur when a product differs from the manufacturer’s design or specifications or from other typical units of the same product line, and the defect causes , or was a substantial factor in causing, a victim’s injuries.
Design defects arise when the defendant’s product does not perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would have expected at the time of its use ( ‘consumer expectation’ test). ‘Risk-benefit’ tests are subject to a defendant’s burden of proof if the injured party proves that he was injured in a foreseeable manner (often used in pharmaceutical product defenses). CA jury instructions in this area have been modified and upgraded from the old BAJI 9.00 series to the current CACI 1200 series, and deal directly with the three subsections of defects:
- manufacturing
- design
- failure to warn
Pohlson & Moorhead, LLP has successfully litigated lawsuits on behalf of clients injured by defective products, and welcomes your questions about such serious injuries.