Products Liability

Damages caused by Defective Products. A few decades, it was very common in rural areas to find farmers missing an arm or several fingers, from machinery without safety guards or safety warnings. Often farmers could not recover, because the manufacturer could show that it was making this machinery in the same way everybody else made it. Negligence cases proceed on a theory that the defendant failed to use ordinary care. Suppose all manufacturers make a product line in the same dangerous way? What then is ordinary care? In the 19th century, many manufacturers successfully argued that they could not be found negligent, because they were merely using processes adopted by all others in the industry. The industry standard set an unfairly and dangerously low standard of care. But in the second decade of the 20th century, courts gradually began to develop a new theory of liability. Under this theory, an injured plaintiff could recover without proving that the manufacturer failed to use "ordinary" care." This new theory, which came to be called products liability proved a significant development in the law of torts. As a result of products liability law, the safety of American products has been tremendously improved. Warnings and safety guards, improved design and safety testing come in part from products liability law.

Examples of Products Liability Cases. Products liability cases now represent some of the most prominent cases in the news. A truck explodes in an accident, allegedly because the gas tank is improperly located. A three wheel vehicle rolls backwards on top of children when it accelerates. A furnace safety valve fails to turn off the gas, leading to a terrible explosion. All of these cases likely involve products liability claims.

Elements of the Products Liability Case. Products liability law is sometimes referred to as "strict liability," because the plaintiff need not prove all of the elements required in a negligence case. As in a negligence case, the plaintiff must prove damages and causation. The elements can be complicated to understand, and the exact rules differ from state-to-state. Minnesota recognizes several kinds of products liability theories. These include:

• Manufacturing Flaw. Under this theory, the plaintiff shows that the product presents a danger that would not be contemplated by an ordinary user. The product defect may result from the way it was manufactured, assembled, inspected, tested or packaged.
• Design Defect. A design defect case proceeds on the theory that the manufacturer must design a product to avoid any unreasonable risk of harm when the product is used properly. The manufacturer must also take steps to avoid harm resulting from unintended reasonably foreseeable uses. Thus, it is not good enough to make a product safe against its intended use. If the manufacturer can guard against likely unintended use of the product, it must do so.
• Failure to Warn. Under the failure to warn theory, a manufacturer may be held liable if a warning would prevent a danger not contemplated by an ordinary user. Here too, the law varies from state-to-state.

A products liability may require far greater effort on the part of the lawyers for both sides. A negligence case focuses on what happened in a specific instance. But a products liability challenges the design, the manufacturing process or the warnings used by a manufacturer across the board. For this reason, the defendant manufacturer often pulls out all of the stops to challenge the plaintiff's case.