Main Content
Class 10
Products Liability: Inadequate Warning, Misuse, and Modification
As the Third Restatement indicates, there is a third category of product defect cases—one that is beyond manufacturing and design defects, though some say it resembles design defect cases. This third category involves cases of allegedly defective warnings. In recent years, warnings cases have become hotly controversial. The basic problem is that warnings are exceedingly inexpensive to adopt. Failure to adopt a warning can therefore often seem to have been negligent if the warning would have prevented even a modest number of injuries. On the other hand, warning proliferation threatens to desensitize or confuse product users.
Misuse and modification can serve as a defense to either design defect or inadequate warning cases. After all, a user who misuses or deforms a product may be injured by something that has nothing to do with the original product or its warning. But are some misuses foreseeable? Should it matter? Should this defense apply differently to design defect claims than to warning claims?
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