Most would likely agree that a company who makes a defective product that hurts or kills someone should pay for its mistake. That's what product liability lawsuits are for—using the law as an instrument to hold negligent manufacturers accountable. In fairness to defendants, courts don't recognize just any type of argument. Arguments they do accept are called causes of action. One of the most common in product defect cases is strict liability. What is strict liability, and how does it apply to defective product lawsuits?
Answer: Strict liability is a cause of action that imposes fault for damages or injuries, even if the person who was found strictly liable did not act with fault or negligence.
That's the definition, but not necessarily an explanation. Let's take a closer look at strict liability, how to prove it, and why it matters to people hurt by dangerous products.
Strict Liability, Explained
For a very long time, our legal system held that in order for a person to recover damages for an injury, they had to show that another person caused that injury either intentionally or through carelessness. This worked well for hundreds of years until the advent of the mass consumer market. All of a sudden, you had countless products available to consumers that made their lives better—but could also hurt them. Without getting too far in the weeds, let's just say that negligence (or carelessness) law didn't work in that environment.
That's when courts developed the idea of strict liability. Think of it as a rule that says “If you make something dangerous and it hurts someone because it you didn't make it right, you’re responsible—even if you weren't careless or didn’t mean for it to happen.”
Example: Let’s say you buy a brand-new toaster from a well-known company. You take it home, plug it in, and start using it normally—nothing weird, just making some toast. But there’s a surprise hitch: Due to a manufacturing defect, the wiring inside the toaster isn't insulated right. One morning while you’re toasting a nice slice of pumpernickel, the toaster suddenly catches fire. The flames burn your hand pretty badly and even start a small kitchen fire.
You're pretty mad (who wouldn't be?) and decide to sue to the toaster manufacturer. Under strict liability, all you have to prove is that the device caught fire and ToasterCo was responsible. It doesn’t matter if they had the best safety checks in the world or if the defect was a total fluke; strict liability shifts the focus away from the company's behavior and focuses on the product itself.
That idea also applies to bigger, far more dangerous products. For example, a temperamental toaster is nothing next to what can happen if a car or truck goes haywire—and many of its possible defects might trigger strict liability arguments if somebody gets hurt by them. Of course, believing a defective product caused your injury and actually holding its maker accountable in front of a jury are different things.
How Do I Prove a Company Is Strictly Liable?
Unlike many other kinds of lawsuits which require the victim to prove someone's negligence hurt them, with strict liability you don't have to prove the manufacturer was reckless or malicious. The focus is only on proving that a product you bought in good faith broke in a way it shouldn't have and injured you. To do that, a product liability attorney will need to prove the following:
- The product was defective: We go into the different kinds of product defects in more detail here, but basically an attorney will need to prove that the product had a defect in one or more of the following categories:
- Design defect – The original blueprint of the product already had problems that weren't fixed or changed before the factory started making them.
- Manufacturing defect – Something went wrong in the creation or assembly of the product's parts, so they didn't function properly during normal use.
- Marketing defect – The company failed to warn consumers about possible risks of using the product.
- The defect made the product unreasonably dangerous: A toaster that could burn your house down? Unreasonably dangerous. An airbag that explodes into flying metal debris during an accident? Unreasonably dangerous. These aren't minor complaints like jewelry turning your skin green; these are serious risks of major harm.
- The defect caused the injury: The defective part was a direct reason for the accident or the injury. Bad toaster wiring led to your toasted hand, brake failure made you crash your car...basically, you can point to a specific malfunction as the root cause of what hurt you.
- You were using the product as intended: This part occasionally trips people up when it eventually turns out they were going "off-book" with a product. The fire caused while toasting bread? Valid argument. The one caused when someone tried to toast a DVD to see what would happen? Not so much.
Each of those steps is more nuanced than that in practice, but that's the general arc of a strict liability argument and the elements that require proof.
Why Should Consumers Care about Strict Liability?
At the risk of stating the obvious, nobody likes being duped into buying a lemon—and when that (metaphorical) lemon explodes and hurts you, that's just adding insult to injury. That's why consumers should care about strict liability: It's one of the most direct arguments to make when trying to hold a corporation accountable for a shoddy product.
To be clear, though, no legal theory creates an automatic win for an injured victim. Strict liability is a powerful cause of action, but the plaintiff would still have to build an effective case around clear and definitive evidence, including expert analysis of the defective product that hurt them. Most people don't exactly have access to those experts, or any real practice identifying faulty components themselves.
That's why an experienced and knowledgeable product liability attorney is so helpful for a defective product case. The Texas lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have decades of experience helping countless people who were injured or lost loved ones in accidents, including those with defective products. If you were hurt by a faulty product, contact Grossman Law today for a free and confidential consultation. Our attorneys are available 24/7 to talk to you.
