Product Liability: Definition And Typical Lawsuits (2025)

Product liability is one of the core practice areas in personal injury law. Fairness dictates that the manufacturer who profited from a product should bear the liability after a consumer suffers an injury due to a defect. Product liability lawsuits give these injured consumers a way to recover compensation for the losses they incur.

For example, product liability law comes into play when a lawyer files class-action lawsuits against a drug manufacturer because side effects of a medication have caused serious health complications. Another example would be when defective airbag inflators explode and kill motorists.

ConsumerShield helps consumers understand their legal rights and find skilled lawyers to represent them. Contact us for a free case evaluation to learn whether you need a lawyer and, if so, which lawyers to contact.

What Is Product Liability?

Product liability is a set of legal theories that hold manufacturers legally responsible for injuries caused by their products. There is no federal product liability law; instead, each state has developed product liability doctrines over two centuries of injury cases.

Although each state’s laws cover only those claims that arise inside their borders, these laws are remarkably uniform across the United States. Specifically, most states use the same three theories of product liability.

Theories of Product Liability Law

The earliest product liability cases relied on contract law — a seller breaches their sales contract when they deliver a defective product to a buyer. This theory had a major drawback: only the buyer could bring a lawsuit. If the buyer’s child suffered an injury, a court might dismiss the parent’s contract claim.

The first advance happened in New York. The state’s highest court held that manufacturers are liable for negligence when customers get injured.

Thus, it did not matter whether the victim had a contractual relationship with the original manufacturer. Manufacturers became liable to all foreseeable users for product liability torts.

The final development occurred when courts decided to dispense with the fiction of an implied warranty and hold manufacturers “strictly liable” for user injuries.

Depending on your state, you can still use these three theories to recover different types of damages.

Breach of Warranty

Breach of warranty is a contractual claim. You can raise this theory if you purchased the product that harmed you. Your attorney must prove that the product’s defect rendered it unfit for its intended purpose. If you prevail on this claim, you can recover the purchase price of the product.

Negligence

Injured victims can seek compensation for unintentional injuries by showing that another person or organization acted negligently. This applies to product liability claims as well as other personal injury claims.

What is product liability negligence? This type of claim involves showing that the manufacturer was careless in designing and manufacturing the product. In this context, carelessness means that the manufacturer should have known that the product would injure users.

This theory is difficult to use. You must hire experts to explain what the manufacturer should have discovered about its products and what it should have done to avoid harming consumers.

Strict Liability

Strict liability is the most powerful of the theories. To win a strict liability claim, you only need to prove that the product contained a defect that caused your injuries. You do not need to prove anything about the manufacturer’s state of mind. Thus, all of the following are irrelevant in a strict liability case:

• Whether the manufacturer intended to release a defective product
• Whether the manufacturer knew about the defect
• Whether the manufacturer should have known the product was defective

Product defects fall into three categories: design, manufacturing, and warning defects.

Design defects are inherent in the product. These products have no safe use, and risks always outweigh their benefits. Takata airbags had a design defect; the chemicals used in these airbags would degrade in hot and humid weather and spontaneously explode.

Manufacturing defects happen at the factory when the product does not meet specifications. Bridgestone/Firestone tires had a manufacturing defect because one plant produced tires with an adhesive layer that was too thin, leading to tread separation.

Warning defects happen when the manufacturer fails to explain how to use the product safely. They can also happen when the manufacturer fails to warn against foreseeable misuse. Several dangerous products allegedly had warning defects, such as tobacco and asbestos.

The Roundup lawsuit also alleges a warning defect. In lawsuits against Roundup, injured consumers argue that the company knew about the dangers posed by its products but failed to warn customers to wear protective gear while using them.

Types of Product Liability Claims

Any product that injures users can be the subject of a personal injury product liability claim. Some of the major areas of product liability cases involve dangerous medications, physical defects, and hazardous substances.