Opinion ID: 1377843
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Strict Liability in General

Text: The doctrine of strict liability had its genesis in a concurring opinion by Justice Roger Traynor in Escola v. Coca Cola Bottling Co. (1944) 24 Cal.2d 453, 461 [150 P.2d 436]. He suggested that a manufacturer should be absolutely liable if, in placing a product on the market, it knew the product was to be used without inspection, and it proved to have a defect that caused injury. The policy considerations underlying this suggestion were that the manufacturer, unlike the public, can anticipate or guard against the recurrence of hazards, that the cost of injury may be an overwhelming misfortune to the person injured whereas the manufacturer can insure against the risk and distribute the cost among the consuming public, and that it is in the public interest to discourage the marketing of defective products. This court unanimously adopted Justice Traynor's concept in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57, 62 [27 Cal. Rptr. 697, 377 P.2d 897, 13 A.L.R.3d 1049], holding a manufacturer strictly liable in tort and using the formulation of the doctrine set forth in Escola. (1) Strict liability differs from negligence in that it eliminates the necessity for the injured party to prove that the manufacturer of the product which caused injury was negligent. It focusses not on the conduct of the manufacturer but on the product itself, and holds the manufacturer liable if the product was defective. In 1965, soon after our decision in Greenman, the Restatement Second of Torts published section 402A, which set forth the strict liability doctrine (hereinafter section 402A). [1] Almost all states have adopted some form of strict liability since that time. (Prosser & Keeton on Torts (5th ed. 1984) § 99, p. 694.) This court refined and explained application of the principle in Cronin v. J.B.E. Olson Corp. (1972) 8 Cal.3d 121 [104 Cal. Rptr. 433, 501 P.2d 1153], and Barker v. Lull Engineering Co. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 413 [143 Cal. Rptr. 225, 573 P.2d 443] (hereafter Barker ). In Cronin, we rejected the requirement of section 402A that the defect in a product must be unreasonably dangerous to the consumer in order to invoke strict liability, holding that the requirement rings of negligence (8 Cal.3d at p. 132) and that the showing of a defect which proximately caused injury is sufficient to justify application of the doctrine. Barker defined the term design defect in the context of strict liability. In that case the plaintiff was injured while operating a piece of heavy construction equipment, and claimed that a safety device called an outrigger would have prevented the accident. We held that the defendant could be held liable for a defect in design. Barker identified three types of product defects. (20 Cal.3d at p. 428.) First, there may be a flaw in the manufacturing process, resulting in a product that differs from the manufacturer's intended result. The archetypal example of such a defect was involved in Escola, supra, 24 Cal.2d 453, a Coca Cola bottle that exploded. Such a manufacturing defect did not exist in the heavy equipment that caused the injury in Barker, and is not alleged in the present case. Second, there are products which are perfectly manufactured but are unsafe because of the absence of a safety device, i.e., a defect in design. This was the defect alleged in Barker. It held that a product is defectively designed if it failed to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect when used as intended or reasonably foreseeable, or if, on balance, the risk of danger inherent in the challenged design outweighs the benefits of the design. (20 Cal.3d at p. 430.) Plaintiff asserts this test should be applied in the present case because DES contained a design defect. The third type of defect identified in Barker is a product that is dangerous because it lacks adequate warnings or instructions. According to plaintiff, defendants here failed to warn of the dangers inherent in the use of DES. We are concerned, therefore, with the second and third types of defects described in Barker.