Product Liability and Mass Torts: Defending Companies at Any Scale

A manufacturer sued for a design defect must demonstrate that no reasonable alternative design existed at the time of manufacture that would have meaningfully reduced foreseeable risks without impairing the product's core utility, and product liability counsel defending a design defect claim must evaluate whether the product's design satisfies the risk-utility balancing test applied in the jurisdiction, whether the plaintiff's proposed alternative design was technically feasible and economically viable at the time of manufacture, and whether any post-sale design changes can be excluded as subsequent remedial measures under the applicable evidentiary rules.

A manufacturer sued for failing to provide adequate warnings must demonstrate that the warnings provided were reasonable given the scientific knowledge available at the time of manufacture, and products liability counsel defending a warning defect claim must evaluate whether the product's warnings satisfied the applicable regulatory standards and whether the plaintiff's misuse of the product was the proximate cause of the injury rather than any failure to warn.

A defendant in a product liability class action must demonstrate that the proposed class does not satisfy Rule 23's requirements, and class actions and consumer defense counsel opposing class certification must evaluate whether individual issues of causation, injury, and damages predominate over the common questions that the plaintiff identifies, whether the named plaintiffs' claims are sufficiently typical of the putative class members' claims, and whether the plaintiff can satisfy the superiority requirement when individual damage claims are substantial enough to support individual litigation.

A defendant in multidistrict litigation faces pretrial proceedings consolidated before a single judge whose rulings will effectively shape the settlement value of the entire docket, and class actions and multi-district litigation counsel advising on MDL defense strategy must evaluate whether the defendant can obtain favorable rulings on general causation and product defect in the early stages of the MDL and whether the document production protocols are structured to minimize the risk of damaging internal communications reaching the jury.

A defendant seeking to exclude a plaintiff's causation expert must demonstrate that the expert's testimony does not satisfy Daubert's standards of reliability and relevance, and mass tort counsel advising on a Daubert motion must evaluate whether the expert's methodology has been subjected to peer review and accepted by the relevant scientific community and whether the expert has applied the methodology reliably to the specific facts of the case without engaging in result-driven reasoning.

A plaintiff who relies on epidemiological studies to establish general causation must produce studies demonstrating a statistically significant association between the defendant's product and the injury alleged, and toxic exposure counsel evaluating the epidemiological evidence in a mass tort case must evaluate whether the association identified in the plaintiff's studies satisfies the Bradford Hill criteria for causation and whether confounding factors such as genetic predisposition or environmental exposure adequately explain the plaintiff's injury independent of any exposure to the defendant's product.

A manufacturer that faces punitive damages claims must demonstrate that its conduct did not involve malice or reckless indifference to consumer safety, and punitive damages lawsuits counsel defending against punitive damages must evaluate whether the defendant's safety decision-making process was reasonable given the information available at the time, whether the defendant adequately disclosed known risks to regulators and consumers in a manner that undermines the plaintiff's claim of concealment, and whether any punitive damages award satisfies the constitutional ratio limits articulated by the Supreme Court.

A defendant that has reached the point in product liability and mass torts litigation where continued individual trials pose unacceptable financial risk must evaluate whether a global settlement providing legal finality is preferable to continued litigation, and consumer class actions counsel advising on a global settlement must evaluate whether the settlement structure achieves res judicata effect against all class members who do not opt out and whether the claims administration process can efficiently process the anticipated volume of claims without creating appellate challenges to the settlement's adequacy.