Tag: August A. Rendigs Jr. National Products Liability Competition

by Jes­si­ca Christy*

Fail­ure-to-warn claims in prod­ucts lia­bil­i­ty suits face spe­cial prob­lems in prov­ing cau­sa­tion. Many courts have respond­ed by estab­lish­ing a rebut­table pre­sump­tion that a plain­tiff would have read and heed­ed an ade­quate warn­ing if it had been pro­vid­ed. In this Con­tri­bu­tion, Jes­si­ca Christy (’21) con­sid­ers argu­ments that this “heed­ing pre­sump­tion” ulti­mate­ly under­mines the well-being of con­sumers, and con­cludes that such con­cerns are best addressed by rig­or­ous­ly defin­ing “warn­ing defect,” not by abol­ish­ing the pre­sump­tion of causation.