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Product Liability

A claim against the maker or seller of a product that injured someone because of how it was designed, how it was made, or what it failed to warn about - and the federal rules that can shut some of those claims down.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

What it means

A product liability claim alleges that a product was defective and the defect caused injury. The law recognises three kinds of defect. A manufacturing defect means the particular item departed from its own design - a contaminated batch, a weld that failed, a missing guard on one unit. A design defect means the product was made as intended but the design itself was unreasonably dangerous, judged in most states by whether a safer alternative design was reasonably available or, in others, by whether the product performed as an ordinary consumer would expect. A warning defect means the product carried a risk that was not obvious and the instructions or warnings did not adequately disclose it.

The claim can usually be brought against everyone in the chain of distribution - manufacturer, component supplier, distributor and retailer - although many states let a non-manufacturing seller step out of the case once the manufacturer is identified and solvent. Depending on the state and the theory, the claim sounds in strict liability, negligence, or breach of warranty, and the three are commonly pleaded together. Misuse of the product, alteration after sale, and the injured person's own fault are the standard defences.

Federal law overrides some of these claims entirely. Where a federal agency has approved a product's design or labelling under a statute that expressly preempts state requirements, a state-law claim that would impose a different requirement may be barred; the Supreme Court has held that to be so for medical devices approved through the most rigorous federal premarket process, and not so for brand-name drug labelling. Which side of that line a product falls on is often the first and last question in the case.

Where this comes from

Product liability is state law, framed by Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A and the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability §§ 1-2, which many state courts follow in defining the three defect types. Federal preemption turns on the particular statute: Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 552 U.S. 312 (2008) (premarket-approved medical devices, claims preempted) and Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555 (2009) (brand-name drug labelling, claims not preempted) mark the boundaries. Recalls and the federal safety agencies are covered under the vehicle safety recall entry.

When people hire a lawyer for this

Keep the product, the packaging and the receipt, and do not let anyone - including the manufacturer - take the item for "testing" without a lawyer involved, because the physical evidence is the case. These claims are expert-driven and expensive to bring, which is why they are typically taken on contingency only where the injury is serious; a lawyer will tell you quickly whether the injury and the product together clear that bar.

Find a lawyer for this in your state

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, civil legal aid programmes provide free help with many of these problems: civil legal aid programmes by state.

Related free reference tools: statute of limitations for a personal-injury claim, by state, quoted from each state's official text - part of LawyerLand's legal reference tools.