Under Arizona state law, a defective product is one that, when it leaves the control of the manufacturer or the product seller, is defective, unreasonably dangerous, and causes injury, death, or property damage.
There is no one single statute that provides this definition. Instead, it comes from how Arizona courts define Arizona’s product liability statutes and common law.
You can prove a product liability claim in more than one way. Perhaps the most common way is through strict liability, but other ways include negligence and breach of warranty claims.
Stone Rose Law represents Arizona residents who have product liability claims. In this post, we explain how Arizona’s product liability laws work.
If you believe you have been harmed by a defective product, call our law offices at (480) 631-3025 or use our online contact form.
The Arizona statutes governing product liability claims are found in Article 9 of Chapter 6, Title 12 of the Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS).
The 10 specific statutes are ARS 12-681 through ARS 12-690. We will not examine all of these individual laws here, but we will highlight some of their more significant provisions.
Note that Arizona’s product liability statutes do not wholly replace the common law-based theory of product liability claims. The statutes only supersede common law to the extent of their own coverage.
What this means is that, when you are making a legal claim based on product liability, most of the law will still be grounded in Arizona’s body of court decisions.
ARS 12-681 is the definitional statute for product liability law. Some of its important provisions are covered below.
A manufacturer includes not only the company that fabricates, assembles, produces, or constructs a product, but also any company that sells a product.
A seller is any person or business who is engaged in selling or leasing products for resale, use, or consumption. Sellers include wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and lessors.
Any seller of a product that the manufacturer wholly owns or owns in significant part is included in the definition of “manufacturer.”
What this means is that if a manufacturer, like an automobile maker, entirely or substantially owns distributorships and dealerships that sell its cars, these entities can also be sued along with the car maker in a product liability action.
A product includes its components as well as the finished whole. If any component is dangerously defective, the entire product may be considered defective — opening the door to product liability claims against both the manufacturer and the component maker.
Certain statutory defenses apply to food products that are fit for human consumption and consumed in reasonable quantities, but food products may still be defective or unreasonably dangerous under Arizona law.
A product liability claim is based on harm caused by a defective product. The harm can take any of the following forms:
There are three main ways that a product can become defective for product liability purposes: design defects, manufacturing defects, and failures to warn consumers.
A product is defective in its design when the product is made as intended by the manufacturer, but any of the following occur:
A manufacturing defect can occur in a product that is designed properly if any of the following circumstances exist:
Examples of manufacturing defects include incorrect parts, faulty assembly, or damaged components introduced during the product’s manufacture.
A failure to warn is also known as a marketing defect.
If a product is sold without adequate instructions or warnings, or if enclosed warnings do not warn the consumer about risks the manufacturer knows about or that are reasonably foreseeable, then the product may still be defective.
This applies even if it works correctly, if it is still unreasonably dangerous to use.
Adequate warnings include:
Under Arizona law, in its design, manufacture, or marketing, a risk becomes unreasonable when it goes beyond the kind of risk that an ordinary consumer would expect (the “consumer expectation test”), or the danger outweighs the utility of the product when the consumer uses it as intended and/or misuses it in a manner that was foreseeable by the manufacturer.
As we mentioned in the introduction, there are three ways to make a product liability claim under Arizona law. We examine each of them below.
Most Arizona product liability claims are based on holding the manufacturer strictly liable for defects in product design, manufacture, or marketing.
Any business that places a defective product into the stream of commerce may be held strictly liable, even if it did not create the defect itself. This includes:
To prove strict liability, you must show all of the following to be true:
The legal reasoning is that it is often hard to prove fault on the part of companies involved in the manufacturing process, especially for complex products.
If you can establish all four product liability elements above, you do not need to show that the defendant acted intentionally or carelessly, or that it even knew about the defect.
Arizona law also allows product liability claims based on negligence. This cause of action is harder to prove than strict liability, but in some circumstances, it may still be the preferred course.
To succeed with a negligence-based product liability claim, you must show all the following are true:
Not all product liability cases lend themselves to this approach. Here are situations in which a negligence action may be the path.
This legal theory does not cover post-sale conduct — such as a failure to issue a recall warning or negligent testing and monitoring of the product after it reaches the market. A negligence-based action can address these gaps.
Under ARS 12-681, this cause of action only applies to manufacturers and sellers in the product chain of distribution — not to product designers, engineers, service companies, or other parties outside those categories.
Strict liability does not address the harm that others cause by their conduct.
It does not apply to situations in which a person ignores known product safety risks, violates industry standards, engages in inadequate product testing, or makes cost-cutting decisions that compromise product safety.
In cases involving these kinds of defendants, a negligence-based claim is the appropriate remedy.
Also, if you seek punitive damages based on a product liability claim, because strict liability is unrelated to conduct, a negligence cause of action is often the stronger path, since it is conduct-based.
Product liability plaintiff’s lawyers often file negligence-based product liability claims as alternatives to strict liability claims. This way, if you cannot prevail in strict liability, you may still be able to win your case based on the alternative negligence claim.
Products often come with warranties. These can be express warranties, or sometimes the law can impose an implied warranty.
Express warranties can arise from advertising statements, product labels, packaging, or user manuals, or promises the manufacturer or seller makes to you.
An implied warranty is usually based on an Arizona statute. Examples of statutory implied warranties include:
Regardless of the kind of strict product liability claim you use, you will need to prove it with evidence. All three of the causes of action we discussed above require you to present evidence to prove:
Examples of evidence that can be persuasive in a product liability lawsuit include:
Generally, under ARS 12-551 and ARS 12-542, you have two years from the date on which your product liability action accrues.
This usually means two years from the date of your injury, or from when you knew or reasonably should have known of your injury and that it was caused by a defective product.
The money damages you can recover in a product liability lawsuit are the same as for other personal injury victims. These include:
Punitive damages are difficult to obtain in strict liability cases because they require proof of an ‘evil mind,’ but they may still be available where the manufacturer knowingly or recklessly disregards serious safety risks.
If a loved one, such as a spouse or a child, dies because of a dangerously defective product, then you may be able to recover damages in a wrongful death claim.
Defenses you might encounter in a product liability claim can be based on statutes or common law.
ARS 12-683 provides some affirmative defenses to product liability.
If the alleged defect arises from the product’s design or manufacture, but the product’s design, manufacturing, testing, inspection, and labeling conformed to the state of the art at the time the product was first sold, then this can be a defense.
If someone other than the defendant altered or modified the product after it was sold, and the alteration or modification was not reasonably foreseeable but was still the proximate cause of your injury, then this can be a defense to a product liability claim.
Common examples of this defense are removing safety guards from a product or unauthorized mechanical changes.
If harm occurs because a person uses a product in an unintended way or for an unforeseeable purpose, or uses the product contrary to express, clear, conspicuous, and adequate warnings and instructions, and knew or should have known about those warnings through the exercise of reasonable care, then this is a product liability defense.
Certain statutory defenses apply to food products that are fit for human consumption and consumed in reasonable quantities, but food products may still be defective or unreasonably dangerous under Arizona law.
Under ARS 12-2505, a defendant in a product liability lawsuit may assert the plaintiff’s negligence as a defense. This is not an absolute defense, but it might reduce your recovery by the same percentage as any assigned percentage of fault that the court assigns to you.
As mentioned above, Arizona’s product liability statutes do not completely replace the older common law of product liability, and this is true of some of the more traditional defenses to product liability claims.
Common law defenses include lack of causation (the product was not defective or did not cause your injury), assumption of the risk (you knowingly used an unsafe product despite a known danger), product misuse or unforeseeable modification, and the learned intermediary doctrine.
Product liability law in Arizona can be complex to understand and apply.
If you have suffered physical or psychological harm because of a defective and dangerous product, whether you have a claim in product liability, who may be liable to you for wrongful conduct, and under what legal theory, and what you can recover in damages are questions a Stone Rose Law product liability lawyer can help you to understand and to take action on.
Our Phoenix product liability attorneys have extensive experience representing injured consumers harmed by defective items that are inherently dangerous as designed or manufactured.
We can help you assess the type of claim you may have, gather the evidence you need to support it, and represent you in settlement negotiations with an insurance company or in a product liability lawsuit.
To find out more, call our law firm at (480) 631-3025 or contact us online to speak with an experienced Phoenix product liability lawyer during a free consultation.
