Dangerous and defective product claims
California was where modern product liability law was invented, and it remains one of the most favorable places in the country to bring such a claim. The central advantage: you generally do not have to prove the manufacturer did anything careless.
Strict liability, and what it removes from your burden
In Greenman v. Yuba Power Products (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57, the California Supreme Court held that a manufacturer is strictly liable when it places on the market a product with a defect that causes injury. Negligence does not have to be shown.
The practical effect is large. You do not need to reconstruct what happened inside a factory, or prove that a design engineer was careless. You need to show the product was defective, the defect existed when it left the defendant's hands, and it caused your injury while the product was being used in a reasonably foreseeable way.
Liability also runs down the chain of distribution — the manufacturer, the component maker, the distributor and the retailer can all be strictly liable, which matters when a manufacturer is overseas and effectively unreachable.
The three kinds of defect
| Manufacturing defect | This particular item came out wrong. It differs from the intended design and from others off the same line — a weld that was not made, a contaminated batch. Usually the most straightforward to prove, once the item is preserved. |
|---|---|
| Design defect | Every unit is dangerous because the design is. California gives two routes: the consumer expectation test (the product failed to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect) and the risk-benefit test (the risks of the design outweigh its benefits, with the burden on the defendant to justify it). Having two tests, one of which shifts the burden, is a significant advantage. |
| Failure to warn | The product carried a non-obvious risk and the warnings or instructions were inadequate. The warning must be adequate in content, prominence and placement — a hazard buried on page 40 of a manual is not a warning. |
Preserve the product. This is the whole ballgame.
If a manufacturer asks for the product back after an incident, that request should go through someone acting for you. Joint inspection protocols exist precisely so that evidence can be examined without either side destroying it.
Also worth preserving: the serial and model numbers, the purchase record, any recall notice, and anything the seller said at the point of sale.
What we see most
- Lithium-ion battery fires in e-bikes, scooters, hoverboards, vapes, power tools and chargers — now one of the most common serious burn mechanisms there is
- Vehicle component failures — airbags that did not deploy or deployed with excessive force, seat back collapse, roof crush, tire tread separation, fuel system fires
- Tools and machinery with inadequate guarding or defeated safety interlocks, frequently overlapping with construction injuries
- Household appliances — pressure cookers that open under pressure, heaters, electrical goods
- Children's products — furniture tip-overs, cots, car seats, toys with small parts
- Ladders and lifts that failed structurally
Questions people ask
Do I have to prove the company was careless?
Generally no. California applies strict liability in product cases, so the question is whether the product was defective and whether the defect caused your injury — not whether the manufacturer behaved carelessly. That is a significantly lighter burden than ordinary negligence.
The shop offered me a refund if I send it back. Should I?
No, not before speaking to someone. Sending the product back usually destroys the case, because the defective item is the evidence. A refund is worth a fraction of a serious injury claim, and companies do sometimes ask for the item back for exactly this reason.
The product was recalled. Does that prove my claim?
It helps a great deal and does not finish the job. You still have to show that the defect that was recalled is the one that injured you. A recall is also not a precondition — most defective products are never recalled.
The manufacturer is in another country. Is it hopeless?
Often not. Strict liability in California runs along the whole chain of distribution, so the importer, distributor and retailer who sold it can be liable too, and they are reachable. That is one of the main practical reasons the rule exists.
Related
Reviewed October 2026 by Simon Aziz Budhwani, Esq., the attorney responsible for this site. Legal statements here name the California code section they rely on, so you can check them rather than trust them. This is information about the law in general, not advice about your situation.
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