Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (Court Case Study and Analysis)
Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. Case Study
In 1963, there was an incident in which a man was using a power tool that his wife had purchased for him after he had watched a demonstration of the tool being used. The defendant was using the tool after fully reading the brochure and instruction manual. While using the power tool, the piece of wood that he was cutting flew off of the table, striking him in the forehead and causing a substantial amount of injury to the plaintiff. Eventually, the plaintiff sued the company and the retailer for breaching warranty due to the fact that he was well educated about the device and he was using it properly while it still resulted in him being injured.
The plaintiff first tried to take the retailer and the manufacturer to a lower court in hopes of getting a settlement due to the fact that he was injured while using the product in the correct manner. The plaintiff used expert testimony and other witnesses to bring to the court a substantial amount of evidence claiming that the product that was being used by the plaintiff had defected screws, causing the piece of wood to fly off of the machine and causing him harm. The retailer claimed to be negligent in this matter due to the fact that the only sell the tool; they do not make the product themselves. The plaintiff still argued that both the retailer and the manufacturer breached warranties and implied warranties by selling him a defective product. The jury found that the retailer would not be found guilty due to the fact that they were negligent in the matter and that the power tool being ineffective and causing bodily harm to the purchaser did not violate the warranties that they had. However, the jury did decide that the manufacturer was completely at fault for the product malfunction and resulted in the jury demanding that the manufacturer take responsibility for their actions. This resulted in the plaintiff being awarded a $65,000 compensation for being wrongfully injured while using the manufacturer’s power tool.
The manufacturer eventually brought this to the California Supreme Court arguing that the plaintiff waited too long to notify the company that he was going to sue them for breaching their warranty claims. The manufacturer claimed that the injury had occurred too long before the plaintiff decided to file a law suit, and therefore the company should not be held responsible for the injury that the power tool had caused to the purchaser. The issue with this case is that the manufacturer decided that they did not want to be held responsibly solely based on the fact that the plaintiff did not come to them in a timely matter after being affected by the power tool malfunction. Instead of notifying the manufacturer that he was going to sue them right away, the plaintiff waited roughly 10 ½ months after the incident to finally notify them of their breach of warranty.
Once this case got brought up to the California Supreme Court, an interesting and highly debated case occurred. Technically the manufacturer could claim that the warranty cannot be violated due to section 1769 of the Civil Code which states that the purchaser of a product must notify the manufacturer of a breach of warranty within a timely matter. The manufacturer insisted that the purchaser did not notify them within a timely matter due to the fact that it took the plaintiff nearly 10 ½ months to notify the company that their product broke warranty.
The California Supreme Court decided that the manufacturer should be held responsible for the injury that occurred to the plaintiff. They did acknowledge that, in a normal case, the terms of the warranty lawsuit would not be valid due to the fact that the plaintiff waited so long to notify the companies that he would be suing them for the breach of warranty that he had faced. However, due to the fact that there was physical harm that was caused because of a product malfunction, the Supreme Court of California decided to rule in favor of the plaintiff. They also constituted that, from now on, anyone that receives harm due to a malfunction in the product after correctly using a product, is in the right to form a lawsuit. The court also ruled that the manufactures need to take responsibility for their products and how they perform.
In my opinion, I believe that the court made the right decision in relating to product warranties and malfunctions that cause harm from using a product in the correct way. It is up to the companies to take responsibility for the products that they manufacture and the way that they make the products that they have. Companies need to make their products safe for everyone to use so that the producers know that they are not in grave danger when using a power tool correctly. The court also made a statement by determining that, in the future, other companies need to recognize that they are responsible for the safety of their consumers and their products.
