Product Liability

Product liability law is meant to compensate persons injured by defective products and to deter manufacturers from marketing such products.

The Problem

Product liability laws in some states fail to send clear signals to manufacturers about how to avoid liability, and hold manufacturers liable for failure to adopt certain designs when the manufacturers neither knew, nor could have anticipated, the risk.

ATRA’s Position

ATRA supports legislation that: governs all product liability actions, irrespective of the theory on which they are brought, so that plaintiffs cannot evade the law by inventing new theories of recovery; permits a plaintiff to recover damages only upon proof that the product was defective and that the defect was the cause of the harm; sets out clear rules for determining when a product is defective; provides clear standards for establishing liability based on manufacturing defects, design defects, and warning defects; provides clear rules requiring proof of causation.

Search Through ATRA Reforms

Search through all of ATRA's reforms around Product Liability
Product Liability Reform: Statute of Repose: SB 92 (1991).
Establishes a 10-year statute of repose for actions brought against architects, engineers, and builders for design error or faulty construction.  Requ...
Utah
Product Liability Reform: Government Standards Defense: SB 25 (1989).
Includes all the provisions of the 1977 product liability statute, except the eight-year statute of repose, which was ruled unconstitutional.  The bil...
Utah
Product Liability Reform: HB 4 (2003).
Provides for a 15 year statute of repose for product liability cases.  In cases involving latent diseases, the plaintiff must have been exposed within...
Texas
Product Liability Reform: SB 4 (1993).
Requires proof of an economically and technologically feasible safer alternative design available at the time of manufacture in most product liability...
Texas
Products Liability Reform: Regulatory Compliance: HB 2008 / SB 1522 (2011).
Prohibits the award of punitive damages against the seller of the product, with certain exceptions, and prohibits the award of punitive damages agains...
Tennessee
Products Liability Reform: Innocent Seller: HB 2008 / SB 1522 (2011).
Prohibits products liability lawsuits against a retailer unless it exercised substantial control over the design, manufacture, packaging or labeling o...
Tennessee
Product Liability Reform: S.B. 13 (2013)
States that in a product liability action, a manufacturer or seller shall not be liable if the product is inherently unsafe and known to be unsafe by ...
Oklahoma
Products Liability Reform: HB 1603 (2009).

Provides that a manufacturer shall not be liable if the product is inherently unsafe.

Oklahoma
Product Liability Reform Statute of Repose: Am Sub SB 80 (2004).

Provides for a ten-year statute of repose for product liability actions, with certain exceptions.

Ohio
Product Liability Reform: HB 350 (1996).
Amends product liability law to include additional requirements for establishing liability.  Prohibits expanding theories of liability, including ente...
Ohio


Product Liability News and Press

Explore ATRA's most recent press releases and blogs around Product Liability

2nd Circuit Revives Acetaminophen Lawsuits, Overturning Judge Cote’s Rule 702 Ruling 

The American Tort Reform Association today chided the 2nd Circui...

ATRA: High Court Affirms Federal Labeling Standards, Rejects Made-for-Litigation Science

The American Tort Reform Association today issued a statement on yesterday...

The High Cost of Junk Science Verdicts in Los Angeles

This op-ed was authored by ATRA’s Lauren Sheets Jarrell and was orig...

Search Resources

Search through all of ATRA's Amicus Briefs, Reports, and Other Resources around Product Liability
Search All
States
Status
Post Types
Date
Letter Urging Veto or Amendments to House Bill 449 / Senate Bill 229 in Virginia
...
Virginia
Corporate Flight from Delaware: The Impact of Escalating Shareholder Litigation and Legal Uncertainty
Unpredictable court rulings and a wave of lawyer-driven, profit-seeking litigation are destabilizing Delaware’s historic dominance for corporat...
Delaware
New York Local Legal Services Advertising 2024-2025
Trial lawyers and aggregators increasingly spend large sums of money on television, digital, and print advertising to recruit new clients. In 2025, i...
New York
Murphy v. Rio Rancho Center
(New Mex. Ct. App., filed March 5, 2026): Arguing that the double-digit punitive multipliers likely violate due process. The U.S. Supreme Court has s...
New Mexico
  • Case Not Yet Decided iconCase Not Yet Decided
Monsanto v. Durnell
(U.S., filed March 2, 2026): Arguing that requirements for herbicide labeling should not be made case-by-case in litigation sparked by a flawed IARC ...
SCOTUS
  • Court Ruled in Favor of ATRA's Position iconCourt Ruled in Favor of ATRA's Position
Cowan v. Dr. Slann et.al.
(N.D., filed February 23, 2026): Arguing that reasonable limits on medical liability improve the health care system for doctors and patients and Nort...
North Dakota
  • Case Not Yet Decided iconCase Not Yet Decided
Oregon Local Legal Services Advertising 2021-2025
Trial lawyers and aggregators increasingly spend large sums of money on television, digital,and print advertising to recruit new clients. In 2025, it...
Oregon
The Junk Science Playbook
The Machine That Sparks and Supports Mass Tort Litigation Introduction and Executive Summary Mass tort litigation is a sprawling, profit-driven...
Bio-Lab, Inc. v. Fannie Tartt et al.
(GA, filed January 20, 2026): Arguing that traditional tort law and persuasive decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous state high courts do ...
Georgia
  • Case Not Yet Decided iconCase Not Yet Decided
Sanctionable: The unsupported, exaggerated, and suspicious claims plaguing our nation’s courts
There is growing concern that many lawsuits filed in our nation’s courts are unsupported, involve manufactured or exaggerated injuries, or stem from ...
California, Florida, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania



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