Opinion ID: 2635992
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Determining User Sophistication

Text: The relevant time for determining user sophistication for purposes of this exception to a manufacturer's duty to warn is when the sophisticated user is injured and knew or should have known of the risk. (See Crook v. Kaneb Pipe Line Operating Partnership (8th Cir.2000) 231 F.3d 1098, 1102.) As amicus curiae Product Liability Advisory Counsel observe, the Court of Appeal correctly understood the defense to eliminate any duty to warn when the expected user population is generally aware of the risk at issue, and correctly rejected the argument that a manufacturer's duty to warn should turn on the individual plaintiffs actual understanding of the risk. Legal duties must be based on objective general predictions of the anticipated user population's knowledge, not case-by-case hindsight examinations of the particular plaintiffs subjective state of mind. As the Court of Appeal pointed out, [t]he sophisticated user defense will always be employed when a sophisticated user should have, but did not, know of the risk. Otherwise, the issue would be actual knowledge and causation. Therefore, the sophisticated user's knowledge of the risk is measured from the time of the plaintiffs injury, rather than from the date the product was manufactured. The timeline focuses on the general population of sophisticated users and conforms to the defense's purpose to eliminate any duty to warn when the expected user population is generally aware of the risk at issue.