Strict and Products Liability Flashcards

A restaurant serves a cherry pie and a customer breaks a tooth on a cherry pit. Under the foreign-natural test for strict products liability in food cases, the restaurant is:

Answer: Not strictly liable because cherry pits are natural to cherries

Under the foreign-natural test, a seller is not strictly liable for natural components of food (like cherry pits in cherry pie) because they are not 'foreign' to the product.

A plaintiff claims a pharmaceutical company failed to update drug warnings after post-market studies revealed new risks. This is best described as a:

Answer: Post-sale duty to warn claim

A post-sale duty to warn claim arises when a manufacturer learns of new dangers after the product is sold and fails to notify users or update warnings.

A plaintiff sues under strict liability after being harmed by a component part installed in a finished product. The component manufacturer argues it supplied the part to the specifications of the assembler. Under the raw material/component parts doctrine, the component manufacturer is most likely:

Answer: Not strictly liable if the component was not defective itself and defect arose from the assembler's design

A component part manufacturer is not strictly liable when the component itself was not defective and the defect resulted from the assembler's design or specifications.

A gun manufacturer sells a firearm that works exactly as designed but is used by a criminal to injure someone. The victim sues the manufacturer under strict products liability. The court will most likely:

Answer: Dismiss because the product performed as intended and the harm was caused by criminal misuse

Strict products liability requires a product defect — a gun that functions as designed is not defective, and criminal misuse is an intervening cause that breaks the chain of liability.

Under the risk-utility test for design defect, which factor does NOT weigh in the analysis?

Answer: The manufacturer's subjective belief about the product's safety

The risk-utility test uses an objective balancing of factors; the manufacturer's subjective belief about safety is irrelevant to the analysis.

A plaintiff is injured by an exploding fire extinguisher. She cannot explain why it exploded. She invokes res ipsa loquitur. To use this doctrine in a strict products liability case, the plaintiff must show:

Answer: The plaintiff did not misuse the product and the injury is the type caused by manufacturing defects

In strict products liability, a res ipsa-type inference arises when the plaintiff shows the injury resulted from the kind of malfunction manufacturing defects cause and eliminates her own misuse.

A strict liability claim for abnormally dangerous activity requires that the harm result from the:

Answer: Specific risk that made the activity abnormally dangerous

Strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities only covers harms that result from the specific risk that rendered the activity abnormally dangerous — not other incidental harms.