Also known as: products · goods · merchandise
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A manufactured chattel placed into the stream of commerce for use or consumption by others.
Pavel Petrov, suffering from schizophrenia, robs a store. The court finds the robbery would not have occurred but for his mental disease. Petrov receives an acquittal because the offense qualifies as the product of his condition.
Priya Prasad sues Precision Tools after a saw blade detaches and injures her. Precision Tools later adds a guard to the design. The court excludes evidence of the guard to prove a defect in the original product.
Pablo Perez buys a defective ladder from Peak Performance, which labels the ladder with its own brand though another firm manufactured it. Peak Performance faces the same strict liability as the actual manufacturer.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Patriot Insurance sues a foreign brake manufacturer in a state where the brakes reached the forum through ordinary distribution. Mere awareness that the product might arrive there does not create personal jurisdiction.
Perry Pratt contracts orally to sell standing timber on Blackacre to Pierce Patterson. The agreement concerns an interest in land rather than goods, so the statute of frauds applies.
Phuong Pham orders custom parts from Progressive Healthcare that are never produced. After the seller breaches, the buyer may proceed under the section addressing goods still unidentified to the contract.
The rule requires only that the defendant would not have committed the crime but for the mental disease or defect. The offense is treated as the product of the condition under that but-for test.
The evidence remains inadmissible to prove a product defect but may be admitted for another purpose such as impeachment or proving the feasibility of precautionary measures if disputed.
The retailer is subject to the same liability as the actual manufacturer under the rule that one who puts out a chattel as its own product assumes the manufacturer's duties.
Mere placement into the stream of commerce, even with awareness it may reach the forum, is not a sufficient basis for personal jurisdiction over a foreign defendant.
…effect in many States for approximately a century. The Georgia statutes, in contrast, have a modern cast and are a legislative product that, to an extent at least, obviously reflects the influences of recent attitudinal change, of advancing medical knowledge and techniques, and of new thinking about an old issue. We…