Opinion ID: 1967435
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Restatement's considered approach illuminates the most viable route to providing essential clarification and remediation.

Text: Section 2 of the newest Restatement catalogues the traditional three categories of product defect: manufacturing defects, design defects, and defects arising from inadequate warnings or instructions. Compare RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 2(a)-(c), with supra note 1. Manufacturing defects are discerned according to a fairly straightforward test: they are deemed present when a product fails to conform to its intended design, and liability is imposed regardless of whether or not the manufacturer's quality control efforts satisfy reasonableness standards. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 2(a) & cmt. a. The Restatement thus retains classic strict products liability for the category of defects that the doctrine was concerned with when it initially evolved. See supra notes 1-3 and accompanying text. By contrast, however, the Restatement's conception of defective design is more nuanced, to accommodate the wider range of scenarios that may face injured consumers and manufacturers/suppliers. As a general rule, a product is deemed defective in design when the foreseeable risks could have been reduced or avoided by the use of a reasonable alternative design, and when the failure to utilize such a design has caused the product to be not reasonably safe. RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 2(b). [13] The Reporters explain the need for such a negligence-based standard in such classic design cases as follows: In contrast to manufacturing defects, design defects ... are predicated on a different concept of responsibility. In the first place, such defects cannot be determined by reference to the manufacturer's own design or marketing standards because those standards are the very ones that plaintiffs attack as unreasonable. Some sort of independent assessment of advantages and disadvantages, to which some attach the label risk-utility balancing is necessary. Products are not generically defective merely because they are dangerous. Many product-related accident costs can be eliminated only by excessively sacrificing product features that make products useful and desirable. Thus, the various trade-offs need to be considered in determining whether accident costs are more fairly and efficiently borne by accident victims, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, by consumers generally through the mechanism of higher product prices attributable to liability costs imposed by courts on product sellers. Id. § 2 cmt. a. [14] The Restatement also roundly endorses a reasonableness-based, risk-utility balancing test as the standard for adjudging the defectiveness of product designs. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 2 cmt. d. See generally Conk, Is There a Design Defect in the Restatement (Third) of Torts, 109 YALE L.J. at 1132-33 (The Restatement (Third) correctly restates the law of products liability in the alternative-safer-design test of section 2(b). In design-defect cases, it is generally a negligence standard, not a strict-liability rule, that determines whether a product is defective. That fault-based standard [represents] the distilled expression of thirty years of design-defect litigation....). The Restatement also indicates that the cost-benefit test will be applied by the jury, guided by appropriate instructions, where sufficient evidence has been presented to preclude summary judgment or a directed verdict. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 2 cmt. f. Additionally, and of particular interest in this case, the Reporters propose that liability standards reject the open and obvious or patent danger rule as a total bar to a design defect claim, relegating obviousness to the role of one factor among many to consider as to whether a product design meets risk-utility norms. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 2 cmt. d. One commentator forecast the effect of the Restatement as follows: [T]he Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability may be anticipated to provide theories of recovery and systems of proof and defense that neutralize most of the harsh effects of the consumer expectations test and the open and obvious defense. In their stead the Reporters promote exclusive resort to a risk-utility evaluation, fortified by concepts of reasonable foreseeability, which increases the likelihood of liability for manufacturers who put into household use products nominally intended for adults, but which foreseeably invite misadventure with children. M. Stuart Madden, Products Liability, Products for Use by Adults, and Injured Children: Back to the Future, 61 TENN. L.REV. 1205, 1240 (1994). The new Restatement also recognizes that there are scenarios in which a design duty may persist, despite the affordance by the manufacturer of an express warning. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 2 cmt. I; accord Price v. BIC Corp., 142 N.H. 386, 702 A.2d 330, 333 (1997) ([W]hen an unreasonable danger could have been eliminated without excessive cost or loss of product efficiency, liability may attach even though the danger was obvious or there was adequate warning. (quoting LeBlanc v. American Honda Motor Co., 141 N.H. 579, 688 A.2d 556, 562 (1997))). See generally James A. Henderson, Jr. and Aaron D. Twerski, The Products Liability Restatement in the Courts: An Initial Assessment, 27 Wm. MITCHELL L.REV. 7 (2000). In my view, adoption of the Restatement's closely reasoned and balanced approach, which synthesizes the body of products liability law into a readily accessible formulation based on the accumulated wisdom from thirty years of experience, represents the clearest path to reconciling the difficulties persisting in Pennsylvania law, while enhancing fairness and efficacy in the liability scheme. [15]