Strict Liability and Products Liability: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Torts Topic 7, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
Liability imposed without proof of intent or fault, based on the defendant's relationship to a particularly hazardous activity, animal, or defective product that caused the plaintiff's harm.
Rylands v. Fletcher
English case holding a landowner liable when water escaped from a reservoir and flooded a neighbor's mine, establishing liability for non-natural uses of land that escape and cause damage.
Non-natural use of land
The Rylands concept limiting escape liability to uses that are extraordinary or inappropriate for the place, rather than ordinary uses of property in the surrounding community.
Abnormally dangerous activity
An activity that carries a high degree of serious risk that cannot be eliminated by reasonable care, is uncommon, is inappropriate to its location, and whose danger outweighs its community value.
Restatement (Second) sec. 520
The six-factor list courts use to decide whether an activity is abnormally dangerous, covering risk magnitude, unavoidability by care, common usage, appropriateness of location, and social value.
Common usage factor
The inquiry into how many people in the community routinely carry on the activity; widespread ordinary activities such as driving are rarely treated as abnormally dangerous.
Indiana Harbor Belt R.R. v. American Cyanamid
Posner opinion refusing strict liability for a shipper of acrylonitrile because the spill risk could be reduced by ordinary care, so negligence law was the better regulatory tool.
Blasting liability
The paradigm abnormally dangerous activity; a blaster is liable for damage from concussion or debris regardless of the precautions taken, because the residual risk survives due care.
Wild animal liability
A possessor of a wild animal is strictly liable for harm resulting from the dangerous propensities characteristic of that species, whether or not the animal has ever misbehaved before.
Known dangerous propensity
The rule making an owner of a domestic animal strictly liable when the owner knows or has reason to know the specific animal has an abnormal tendency to cause the kind of harm inflicted.
Trespassing livestock
Common law rule holding an owner liable for property damage done by straying cattle or other livestock, subject in many western states to fencing-out statutes reversing the default.
Foster v. Preston Mill
Washington case denying strict liability when blasting vibrations caused a mink to kill her kittens, because that harm fell outside the risks that make blasting abnormally dangerous.
Scope of risk limit on strict liability
Strict liability reaches only harms flowing from the dangerous characteristic that justified the doctrine; unusual or freakish consequences are left to ordinary fault analysis.
MacPherson v. Buick
Cardozo opinion abolishing the privity requirement in products cases, allowing a car buyer to sue the manufacturer directly when a defective wooden wheel collapsed.
Privity of contract requirement
The discarded doctrine that a product user could sue a maker only if the two had contracted directly, which once shielded manufacturers from remote consumers.
Escola v. Coca Cola concurrence
Traynor's separate opinion urging that manufacturers should bear liability without fault for defective products, since they can spread the cost and best prevent the hazard.
Greenman v. Yuba Power
California decision adopting strict tort liability for a defective power tool, freeing the injured user from warranty notice requirements and contract defenses.
Restatement (Second) sec. 402A
The provision imposing liability on a seller of a product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user, even though the seller exercised all possible care.
Manufacturing defect
A departure from the product's own intended design, so the injuring unit differs from others off the same line; proof usually requires no comparison to alternative designs.
Design defect
A flaw in the product line's intended plan making the entire run unreasonably dangerous, tested by consumer expectations, risk-utility balancing, or a reasonable alternative design.
Consumer expectations test
A design is defective if the product is more dangerous than an ordinary consumer with common knowledge of its characteristics would expect when using it in the intended manner.
Risk-utility test
Weighs the danger of the chosen design against its usefulness and the cost, feasibility, and safety of alternatives, resembling a negligence balance applied to the product.
Reasonable alternative design
The Restatement (Third) of Torts Products Liability requirement that a plaintiff normally show a safer practical design existed whose omission made the product not reasonably safe.
Barker v. Lull burden shift
California rule allowing either consumer expectations or a risk-benefit theory, and shifting to the defendant the burden of proving the design's benefits outweigh its dangers.
Failure to warn
A products theory treating a product as defective when foreseeable dangers could have been reduced by reasonable instructions or warnings that the seller omitted.