Hacker News Reader

Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

When product liability lawsuits start flying, every point the product touches along its route to the consumer gets named. The ones with deep pockets especially.

As big as amazon is, this could have been noticeable exposure, especially if they are partially self-insured and/or have other risk-sharing provisions in place.

Think: class-action lawsuit on an order of magnitude approaching asbestos.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but Amazon is wise to avoid total reliance on their position as facilitating a marketplace as opposed to being the seller. I don't think too many courts would toss a lawsuit over a newly vision-impaired 12 year old just because Amazon only got a cut of the sale as opposed to was the seller -- TOS provisions be damned.

View on HN

It doesn't seem to me that a single email should be sufficient to remove their liability for selling these things. They have sold thousands of glasses with the description of being ISO certified and safe to use. They've been selling them for months. Then a week before the event they sent out an email telling you it wasn't safe to use them. What percent of their customers will never see that email and potentially ruin their vision?

Well, there are also the multiple news stories in a bunch of different newspapers and (I assume) TV channels.

I'm not a lawyer, but intuitively it seems like the more control they exercise over their products the weaker the claim that they're just a middleman becomes. Wouldn't a record of being directly involved in quality control significantly damage their case in the event that a lawsuit does occur?

In many cases amazon is clearly liable. Amazon is the one who mixed unsafe and safe glasses. When someone ordered from a safe seller amazon didn't always ship the glasses that seller provided, they shipped something which might be safe or might be dangerous.

If this goes to court this guy is safe because his supplier will show up with their lawyers (and deeper pockets) and point out that their glasses are safe. They will show that Amazon was the party who didn't take care.

Note, there are many different ways to sell on amazon. I'm not clear which route this guy took, only some result in nobody knowing if the glasses amazon ships are safe.

In the US, products liability law places responsibility for defective products on all commercial participants in the chain, from manufacturer to the final retail seller. It doesn't matter whether they're involved in any QC at all; it is sufficient that they're selling a product for profit.

Right, but in this case several parties will get out because they are not part of the chain because amazon did not carefully preserve the full chain. Amazon will be liable to the entirely of the chain not just a part because they didn't track the full train on each product.

A business is required to do due diligence for the business it does. Doesn't matter if it's a marketplace, a seller, a reseller, or whatever.

Avoiding quality control on purpose is no excuse. That's a proof that you are not following the law and that can be considered as aggravating circumstances if you avoid it on purpose. That's the sort of thing that a judge may consider as a reason to send you to jail for longer.

Products liability law is civil, not criminal law. Quality Control doesn't absolve any commercial participant from liability for a defective product. Whether or not QC is required depends on the product (i.e., generally it is required for food at every level but retail, whereas it may be mostly optional for electronics).

well, you can't start that today right before someone's eyes get burned out. You could have taken that stance in 2000.

People have been complaining more and more lately about Amazon's problems with counterfeiting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com