Louisiana Products Liability Act (LPLA)

Question 1

The LPLA

Answer 1

• The Louisiana Products Liability Act (LPLA) provides the exclusive remedy against manufacturers of products for personal injury actions.
• For this claim to work, there must first be defendant manufacturer. Generally, a manufacturer is a person or entity in the business of manufacturing a product for placement into trade or commerce. Here . . .

Question 2

Proximate Cause

Answer 2

• Next, the analysis must turn to the inquiry of “was the damage by this defective product proximately caused by a characteristic that made the product unreasonably dangerous.”
• This proximate cause analysis asks if it is foreseeable that this defective product would cause these damages to this plaintiff. Here . . .

Question 3

4 Ways a Product is Dangerous

Answer 3

The next step of analysis falls to determining whether there was a characteristic of the product that made it unreasonably dangerous in at least one of the four following ways:
(1) Constructive Composition
(2) Design
(3) Inadequate Warning
(4) Breach of Express Warranty.

Question 4

(1) Constructive Composition

Answer 4

This requires that there be some material deviation from the specifications of identical products that caused the harm. Of note, this is a strict liability theory, meaning that no knowledge of the defect is required.
- The proverbial “lemon”

Question 5

(2) Design

Answer 5

• Design addresses the actual specifications of a product. This determines whether the product is unreasonably dangerous in its design.
• An alternative design must exist that would have prevented the plaintiff’s damages (or at least reduced the injuries). Should an alternative design be found to exist, the court must balance the loss of utility against its expected safety advantages under the following factors:
  (a) The moral, social, and economic utility of the product;
  (b) The effects of the alternative design in the utility of the product;
  (c) Any new or additional risk created by the new design; and
  (d) The extent to which the alternative design would have prevented or reduced the harm.
• Alternative designs are subject to the “state of the art defense” which states that the manufacturer was using the best technology available at the time of production; here, the manufacturer has the burden of proving that he could not have known of an alternative design due to using the best technology.

Question 6

(3) Inadequate Warning

Answer 6

• This addresses a situation where either a warning on a product is insufficient, or a where there was no warning on at all where there should have been.
• The warning must alert the consumer to any potential danger and instruct him regarding how to use the product. Thus, it lets the user contemplate if he wants to use or decline to use the product. This warning must be conspicuous.
• There is a test for the adequacy of a warning that follows:
  (a) Likelihood of and gravity of the danger;
  (b) Feasibility of providing a warning given the scientific and technological knowledge at the time; and
  (c) The manufacturer’s ability to anticipate that a user or handler would be aware of the danger and the nature of potential danger.
• The adequacy of a warning is also subject to a number of defenses, these include:
  (a) The danger was obvious to an ordinary, reasonable user;
  (b) User already knew or reasonably should have known the dangerous characteristic of the product;
  (c) Manufacturer did not know and reasonably could not know the dangerous characteristic; or
  (d) The warning was not passed on by, e.g. the seller, or the warning was removed.
• And finally, a manufacturer has a continuous duty such that whenever a manufacturer later learns or reasonably should have learned of a dangerous characteristic, he has a duty to warn.

Question 7

(4) Breach of Express Warranty

Answer 7

• This exists when a manufacturer has made an express warranty (that need not be in writing) to which the product did not conform.
• With breach of express warrant, the claimant has to be induced to use the product because of the representation made, and the warranty is untrue.
• Further, the claimant must have sustained damages proximately caused because the express warranty was untrue.

Question 8

Existence of Defect

Answer 8

For each of the above instances (1-4), the defect must exist at the time the product left the control of the manufacturer.

Question 9

Anticipated Use

Answer 9

• The next phase of analysis for LPLA claims is the assessment of a reasonably anticipated use. The damage has to arise from a reasonably anticipated use of the product by the plaintiff or another person.
• If the claimant misuses the product in direct contravention of a warning, his “use” will not be reasonably anticipated unless he can show that the manufacturer should have known that product users “were using the product in contravention of certain warnings.”
• Liability is limited only for uses a manufacturer could reasonably anticipate at the time of manufacture.

Question 10

Damages

Answer 10

Finally, the last part of analysis is assessment of damages. This entails looking into what injuries were caused due to the defective product. Here . . .