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Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause. Although the word "product" has broad connotations, product liability as an area of law is traditionally limited to products in the form of tangible personal property.
In criminal and civil law, strict liability is a standard of liability under which a person is legally responsible for the consequences flowing from an activity even in the absence of fault or criminal intent on the part of the defendant.
The doctrine of privity of contract is a common law principle which provides that a contract cannot confer rights or impose obligations upon anyone who is not a party to that contract. It is related to, but distinct from, the doctrine of consideration, according to which a promise is legally enforceable only if valid consideration has been provided for it, and a plaintiff is legally entitled to enforce such a promise only if he is a promisee from whom the consideration has moved.
This article addresses torts in United States law. As such, it covers primarily common law. Moreover, it provides general rules, as individual states all have separate civil codes. There are three general categories of torts: intentional torts, negligence, and strict liability torts.
In law, liable means "responsible or answerable in law; legally obligated". Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law and can arise from various areas of law, such as contracts, torts, taxes, or fines given by government agencies. The claimant is the one who seeks to establish, or prove, liability.
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation that is imposed on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence. The claimant must be able to show a duty of care imposed by law that the defendant has breached. In turn, breaching a duty may subject an individual to liability. The duty of care may be imposed by operation of law between individuals who have no current direct relationship but eventually become related in some manner, as defined by common law.
Absolute liability is a standard of legal liability found in tort and criminal law of various legal jurisdictions.
MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., 217 N.Y. 382, 111 N.E. 1050 (1916) is a famous New York Court of Appeals opinion by Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo that removed the requirement of privity of contract for duty in negligence actions.
Forensic electrical engineering is a branch of forensic engineering, and is concerned with investigating electrical failures and accidents in a legal context. Many forensic electrical engineering investigations apply to fires suspected to be caused by electrical failures. Forensic electrical engineers are most commonly retained by insurance companies or attorneys representing insurance companies, or by manufacturers or contractors defending themselves against subrogation by insurance companies. Other areas of investigation include accident investigation involving electrocution, and intellectual property disputes such as patent actions. Additionally, since electrical fires are most often cited as the cause for "suspect" fires an electrical engineer is often employed to evaluate the electrical equipment and systems to determine whether the cause of the fire was electrical in nature.
In Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc., 32 N.J. 358, 161 A.2d 69, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that an automobile manufacturer's attempt to use an express warranty that disclaimed an implied warranty of merchantability was invalid.
Irish law on product liability was for most of its history based solely on negligence. With the Liability for Defective Products Act, 1991 it has now also the benefit of a statutory, strict liability regime.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to tort law in common law jurisdictions:
Friend v. Childs Dining Hall Co., 231 Mass. 65, 120 N.E. 407 (1918), is part of a progression of cases that influenced the products liability synthesis that emerged in the 1930s. These cases influenced Judge Cardozo's argument in MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. that a person could be liable for a defective product to someone other than the immediate purchaser. This created the law of product liability.
Chysky v. Drake Bros. Co., 235 N.Y. 468, 139 N.E. 576 (1922), was a products liability case before the New York Court of Appeals. The Court held that a plaintiff cannot recover from a defendant based on implied warranty when she does not have contractual privity with him; thus, a plaintiff cannot recover from a defendant who sold her employer food unfit for consumption, because the defendant's implied warranty extended only to the employer.
Losee v. Clute, 51 N. Y. 494 (1873), was a seminal case in American tort law. Losee involved a third party injured by an exploding boiler who was found to have no claim against the manufacturer of the boiler; this case closely followed Loop v. Litchfield.
Thomas v. Winchester, 6 N.Y. 397 (1852), which established the "imminent danger to human life" doctrine, was at the head of the cases in assaulting the protective wall of privity in the tort field. Subsequent examples include: MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., Goldberg v. Kollsman Instrument Corp., and finally, Judge Jones's landmark holding in Codling v. Paglia, in which the Court demolished what was left of the privity barrier in tort cases by adopting the doctrine of strict products liability.
Devlin v. Smith, 89 N.Y. 470 (1882) was a seminal case decided by the New York Court of Appeals in the area of product liability law.
The Big Apple Pothole and Sidewalk Protection Committee is an organization created by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association to map the sidewalks of New York City for defects capable of causing personal injury. The maps produced by the Committee and delivered to the Department of Transportation essentially negated the effect of a 1979 change to the city's Administrative Code that barred tort actions against the city unless the city was notified of the defects more than 15 days prior to the accident.
Increases in the use of autonomous car technologies are causing incremental shifts in the responsibility of driving, with the primary motivation of reducing the frequency of traffic collisions. Liability for incidents involving self-driving cars is a developing area of law and policy that will determine who is liable when a car causes physical damage to persons or property. As autonomous cars shift the responsibility of driving from humans to autonomous car technology, there is a need for existing liability laws to evolve in order to reasonably identify the appropriate remedies for damage and injury. As higher levels of autonomy are commercially introduced, the insurance industry stands to see higher proportions of commercial and product liability lines, while personal automobile insurance shrinks.
Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc, was a California torts case in which the Supreme Court of California dealt with the torts regarding product liability and warranty breaches. The primary legal issue of the case was to determine whether a manufacturer is strictly liable in tort when an article he places on the market proves to have a defect that causes injury to a human being. The case was originally heard in a San Diego district court where the verdict was against the manufacturer. This verdict was appealed by the manufacturer to the Supreme Court of California which was presided by Gibson, C. J., Schauer, J., McComb, J., Peters, J., Tobriner, J., and Peek, J., and the opinion was delivered by Judge Roger J Traynor.
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