A question of ethics
Three-year-old Randy Welch climbed up to a shelf and picked up a disposable butane cigarette lighter. Randy then used the lighter to ignite a flame, which set fire to his pajama top. Welch and his parents brought a product-liability suit against the lighter's manufacturer, Scripto-Tokai Corp, for damages. One of the questions raised in this case was whether the risks attending the lighter were sufficiently "open and obvious" that the manufacturer did not need to warn of those risks.
A QUESTION OF ETHICS
1. The court granted the manufacturer summary judgment, and Welch appealed. The state appellate court affirmed the lower court's decision. The appellate court pointed out in its discussion, "Under the open and obvious danger rule, a manufacturer of a product is liable only for defects which are hidden and not normally observable. . . . [T]he relative obviousness of a defect is . . . relevant in determining whether or not a product is defective and unreasonably dangerous. . . . In this case, the risks posed by a disposable butane lighter are open and obvious to an ordinary user of the lighter." With this in mind, the court concluded that "Scripto was not negligent in failing to design the lighter with child-resistant features and Scripto had no duty to warn Welch of the lighter's inherent dangers." The court noted that "although the manufacturer of a lighter does not have a duty to provide a warning to keep the lighter away from children, in this case, Scripto provided such a warning on the package in which the lighter was sold."
2. In discussing the openness and obviousness of the dangers of a disposable lighter, the appellate court based its conclusions on "[t]he physical characteristics of the lighter, including the fact that it would ignite when one pushed down on the thumb lever and that it could be operated by a small child." This, as the court saw it, "could be directly observed. Accordingly, the danger of allowing a lighter to fall into the hands of a small child is open and obvious."
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