Maryland Product Liability Lawyers
Design Defects
A design defect claim requires proof that a product’s design itself made it unreasonably dangerous, not just that one unit malfunctioned. The plaintiff must also show a safer alternative design was realistically achievable and that the design defect directly led to the injury during intended or foreseeable use. Most importantly, the claim hinges on evidence that the flaw passes into the product line and could have been avoided through a practical and affordable redesign.
Key Elements to Prove
- Unreasonably Dangerous Design: The product is unreasonably dangerous because its underlying design makes it unsafe for intended or foreseeable use, regardless of manufacturing quality.
- Foreseeable Use: The injury resulted from a use of the product that was reasonably foreseeable.
- Causation: The defective design directly caused the plaintiff’s injuries and resulting damages.
- Safer Alternative Design: The manufacturer could have implemented a safer and feasible alternative design.
- Damages: The defect caused the plaintiff to incur medical expenses, lose wages, and pain & suffering.
HOW IT DIFFERS FROM OTHER DEFECTS
- Design Defect: The design itself is flawed, creating a common danger across the entire product line such as a rollover-prone vehicle.
- Manufacturing Defect: The problem stems from a production error that affects only specific units, not the entire product line.
- Marketing Defect: A failure-to-warn claim involves a product that is safe as designed but dangerous due to inadequate warnings or instructions.
THE PRODUCT LIABILITY TORTS
A. The Strict Product Liability Doctrine
This section states that a seller who offers a product in a defective condition that makes it dangerous to users, consumers, or their property can be held liable for any resulting physical harm. This applies when the seller is in the business of selling such products and the product reaches the user or consumer in substantially the same condition as it was sold.
The rules apply when the seller exercised all care and the user had no direct purchase or contract with the seller.
The Restatement forms the basis for most strict product liability law, with many states adopting statutory versions, though application can vary by state.
WHO MAY BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES CAUSED BY DEFECTIVE PRODUCTS?
Any entity involved in the chain of distribution for a defective product may be liable for injuries caused by the specific defect.
Potentially liable parties include the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer. Strict product liability shifts the risk of loss from the consumer to those in the distribution chain who profit from the sale. A seller or retailer can be held liable for injuries caused by a defective product, even if they did not create the defect. In most states, however, a distributor or retailer held liable may seek indemnity from the party responsible for the defect.
Non-faulty distributors or sellers can remain liable under pure comparative fault systems.
In these states, product liability is treated as a form of fault, and the manufacturer’s liability is legally imputed to the distributor or retailer, even if they aren’t jointly liable.
ELEMENT OF THE PRODUCT LIABILITY TORT CLAIM
To succeed on a strict product liability claim, a plaintiff must show that the product was inherently defective and that the defect caused the claimed injury or damage. Both elements must be proven separately and specifically.
and and her doctor kept watch over Mary Anne all night, believing she could die at any minute
Ms. THOMAS’s physician succeeded in removing some of the poison, but Ms. Thomas was confined to her bed for weeks and continued to suffer afterwards. Upon learning of the mistake, Mary Anne sued the packager of the medicine.
The packager of the medicine predictably argued that the absence of privity of contract between the producer and the consumer precluded any liability.>>>
In finding for Ms. Thomas, the court ruled that the law of tort, in this case negligence, controlled.
D. The Case of the Noxious Coat: Gerkin -VS- Brown & Sehler
The negligence rule for products did not only apply to medicines. Courts granted relief in cases where judges thought the product was injurious, and concluded that the defendant was at fault for being careless with respect to other products, such as, for example, clothing. . Jack Hyatt is available for help
In early December of 1910, Henry Gerkin bought a coat with a muskrat fur collar, dyed black to imitate mink. Our Maryland Product Liability Attorneys will answer your questions
Mr. Gerkin experienced a severe reaction to the dyed collar and required medical treatment.
At trial, Mr. Gerkin introduced evidence that the manufacturer of the coat, one John Sehler knew that the collar might cause rashes in a certain number of people, and failed to disclose this fact. The court found that the manufacturer had a duty to advise potential customers of potential allergic reactions.
E. The Case of the Pokey Soap: Hasbrouck -VS- Armour & Co.
Armour and Company was a large manufacturer and distributer of meat products, including tallow, which in the nineteenth century, was commonly used tin the manufacture of soap
Somehow, one of the many bars of soap manufactured by Armour contained a needle buried deep into the bar.
F.M. Hasbrouck bought the bar of soap. While using the soap as intended for toilet purposes, the plaintiff was injured by this needle in the soap entering the palm of his hand, causing pain and paralysis, and he sued the manufacturer of the soap, Armour and Co.>>>
The court ruled in favor of the defendant, holding that no reasonable person could have anticipated the presence of a needle in a bar of soap.
F. The Case of the Decayed Can: Tomlinson -VS- Armour & Co.
Contaminated meat products were common in the late nineteenth century. Diseased animals were butchered in filthy conditions, and no standards existed for the meatpacking industry.
In the Spanish American war, canned meat was a frequent cause of food poisoning, and many soldiers preferred to starve rather than to risk illness.
In 1906, Upton Singlair published The Jungle, an expose of the horrors of the meatpacking industry that led ultimately to dramatic reforms in the industry and the passage by Congress of the Pure Food and Drug Act,
A few years later, the court ignored Defendant’s citation to the role to of privity of contract when Plaintiff Ms. Tomlinson sued Armour & Co. for food poisoning resulting from a canned ham that made her sick.
The court founding the basis of tort law that the company owed a duty to consumers not to sell tainted meat.
G. The Case of the Collapsing Car: MacPherson -VS- Buick Motor Co.
As we have seen, there was no generalized privity rule in the United States that limited a producer’s liability to injured consumers.
In finding for the plaintiff in the case of MacPherson v. Bui, in which a defective automobile wheel injured a passenger, ,decided in 1916, Judge Benjamin Cardozo correctly observed that products liability suits that failed in privity of contract would be better he heard in tort.
Dangerous and Dangerous as Designed . Jack Hyatt can answer your questions,
The canonical view is that courts were able to depart from the privity rule through three exceptions.
The first exception to the rule of privity of contract lay a liability for imminently dangerous goods that were intended to preserve, destroy, or affect human life.
Examples of these goods were to be found in the sale of explosives, flammable liquids, poisons, and medicines,
The sale of explosives would fall under this exception.
The second rule concerned owners who invited others to use the dangerous product
Invitees in this case might include customers injured by a collapsing scaffold used in painting or construction,
p. The third rule was that anyone who sold a product he knew or should have known was dangerous was liable to anyone injured by that product.
In the Hessert case, a farmer lost an arm due to a defective threshing machine. Our Maryland Product Liability Lawyers can answer your questions Our Maryland Product Liability Attorney will answer your questions
In the Huset case, the company argued that, as Mr. Huset had not purchased a threshing machine that injured him from the defendant directly, it owed him no responsibility.
That simple argument was unavailing, although if privity were the defendant law should have been dispositive. In finding for the plaintiff, the court explained that thecae s was not governed by contract, but by negligence:
III. ImplicationsWhat are the implications of the fact that privity was never a barrier to suit when it came to mass-market products?
First, it is important to correct the record. Casebooks and historians should distinguish between powerful arguments made by defendants and arguments that won the day. More broadly, modesty is the best approach to the historical development of the common law.
Recently, judges have harkened back to common law rules in analyzing statutes and treated these rules as set in stone by early case law.
