Products Liability

Question 1

Manufacturing Defects

Answer 1

Particular Unit of a product made more dangerous than other units of the product due to a flaw in the production process

Question 2

Design Defect

Answer 2

Involves an entire line of products made more dangerous than it should have been because of a flaw in the design.

Prove design flaw
(1) must demonstrate that a safer alternative design was available but not selected

Question 3

Warning Defect

Answer 3

Failure to communicate to a consumer the dangers of a product in a procedurally and substantively adequate fashion

Question 4

Who is strictly liable for product defects? Can a secondhand seller be liable?

Answer 4

A person who is not in the business of selling the product is not subject to strict liability, such as if someone has a garage sale or sells an item occasionally through classified ads or internet auction sites.

The manufacturer or seller of a product generally can be held strictly liable for selling a product that is in a defective and unreasonably dangerous condition, but this strict liability applies only to those engaged in the business of selling the product.

Question 5

Prescription drugs

Answer 5

While manufacturers generally have a duty to provide adequate warnings to the people who will use a product that is potentially dangerous, courts have held that special considerations apply to prescription drugs. A prescription drug is only available through a doctor, and the doctor acts as a learned intermediary between the drug manufacturer and the patient. Under what has become known as the learned intermediary rule, a prescription drug manufacturer generally does not have a duty to provide warnings directly to patients. The manufacturer must adequately warn doctors, and then doctors have the responsibility for warning patients. Some courts have made exceptions to the learned intermediary rule for certain products, such as vaccines and birth control products, but this question does not involve any of those special exceptions. The manufacturer therefore merely had a duty to provide warnings to the doctor, and not a duty to warn the patient directly.