Responsibility for Products:

Safety and Liability

Faith Angeli M. Campaner-Sheeran

What is Responsibility?

ACCOUNTABILITY ASSIGNING FAULT/LIABILITY

CAUSE
What is Responsibility?

CAUSE = Jay’s Driving ACCOUNTABILITY = Jay Gatsby FAULT/LIABILITY = Jay Gatsby

Responsibility in Business
 Strict Liability

 The business is accountable for

paying damages whether it was at
fault or not
 No matter how careful the
business is in its product or service,
if harm results from use, the
business is liable
Contractual Standards for Product Safety

 Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer Beware)

 Assumes that every purchase involves the informed consent of the buyer
 Buyers have the responsibility to look out for their own interests

FROM THIS PERSPECTIVE, BUSINESS HAS ONLY THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE A

GOOD/SERVICE AT AN AGREED-UPON PRICE
The Social Contract & Marketing

 Individual contracts and promises are the

basis of ethical duties
 Business Context:
 Unless the seller explicitly warrants a
product as safe, unless the seller promises
otherwise, buyers are liable for harms they
suffer
 Sellers have a duty not to coerce, defraud
or deceive buyers
Warranty of Merchantability

 Courts recognized an implicit promise, or implied warranty that accompanies any product
that is marketed
 In selling a product, a business implicitly offers assurances that the product is reasonably
suitable for its purpose
 This approach assumes that consumers adequately understand products well enough that
they can reasonably protect themselves

BUT CONSUMERS DON’T AWAYS UNDERSTAND PRODUCTS FULLY

In effect, the burden of proof shifts from the consumers to producers by allowing consumers
to assume that products were safe for ordinary use
Warranty of Merchantability

 A prudent business will seek

to limit its liability by explicitly
disowning any promise or
warranty
 Most courts will not allow a
business to COMPLETELY
disclaim the implied
warranty
 Contract Law vs. Tort Law

“The only duties I owe are those that I have

“I owe other people a general duty not to
explicitly promised. Otherwise, I owe nothing
put them at unnecessary and avoidable risk”
to anyone.”
Tort Standards for Product Safety

As the consumer gets further

separated from the manufacturer
by layers of suppliers and retailers,
there may be no relationship at all
between the consumer who gets
harmed and the ultimate
manufacturer who was at fault.
 Commission
Negligence Omission

 Central component of tort law

 Neglecting one’s duty to exercise
reasonable care not to harm other
people
 People have done an ethical wrong
when they cause harm to others in
ways that they can reasonably be
expected to avoid
 Involves the ability to foresee the
consequences of our acts and
failing to take steps to avoid the
likely harmful consequences
Should you have seen it?

 A preferable standard or foreseeability would require people to avoid harms that even if they
haven’t actually thought about, they should have thought about had they been reasonable
 People are expected to act reasonable and are hold liable when they are not
 When one has actual notice of a likelihood of harm, the reasonable person expectation is
increased

WHAT IS A REASONABLE PERSON?

 Does what we could expect from the ordinary, average person to do
 But it may turn out that the average consumer is not as smart as we might hope
 The fact that producers have more expertise than the average person, this stronger standard
seems more appropriate when applied to producer than to consumers
Mrs. Palsgraf vs. Long Island Railroad

One of the most influential cases in U.S. tort law involved a railroad company being sued by a
customer who was injured while waiting for a train.
In Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad , Helen Palsgraf was standing at a train station awaiting the
arrival of her train. As an earlier train was leaving the station, another passenger ran to catch the
moving train. Railroad employees helped the man onto the moving train.
In the process of being jostled by the employees, the man dropped his package onto the tracks.
The package contained fireworks for the upcoming 4th of July celebration, and they exploded,
setting off a chain of events. In the mayhem that followed, a scale at the end of the platform was
knocked over, striking Helen Palsgaf and causing her injuries.
Palsgraf sued to recover damages for her injuries.
Mrs. Palsgraf vs. Long Island Railroad

The court in this case faced two basic questions:

 Did the actions of the railroad employees cause her injuries?
 Were the railroad employees negligent in the way they treated customers and, if so, were
they negligent to Mrs. Palsgraf? How would you have decided this case?
Liability for Spilt Coffee

In 1992 a 70-year-old woman was severely burned when a cup of coffee she had just
purchased at a McDonald’s drive-through window spilled on her lap.
She apparently held the cup between her legs and tried to pry off the lid as she drove away.
The coffee was hot enough (185 degrees) to cause third-degree burns that required skin
grafts and long-term medical care. A jury awarded this woman $2.86 million, $160,000 for
compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages.

 Should McDonald’s be held liable for these injuries?

 Was the restaurant negligent in serving such hot coffee at a drive-through window?
 Was the consumer negligent in her own actions?
Product Misuse

A young child is curious about what her mother is cooking on top of the kitchen stove. In
order to gain a better view, she opens the oven door and steps up on it to look into the pans
on the stovetop.
Her weight causes the stove to tip over, spilling the hot food on her and causing severe burns.

 Was the manufacturer at fault for not designing a stove that would not tip with the weight
of a child on the oven door?
 Could the stove design team have foreseen a child using the oven door as a stepladder?
 If you were on a jury and had to decide this case, would you hold the manufacturer
accountable for the child’s injuries?
 Strict Product Liability

 There are cases in which consumers can be

injured in which there was no negligence
involved
 In such cases where no one was at fault,
the question of accountability remains

THE LEGAL DOCTRINE OF STRICT PRODUCT

LIABILITY HOLDS MANUFACTURERS
ACCOUNTABLE IN SUCH CASES
Then, what to do? What is to pay?

 If it is unfair to hold businesses

accountable, it is more unfair to hold
injured consumers accountable
 Neither party is at fault, yet someone
must pay
 A third option would be to have
government
Accountability is best understood
as a matter of utilitarian efficiency
rather than principle