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Comment by kirillzubovsky | Hacker News Reader

Actually, on the contrary, imagine you went to Safeway, and they sold you a carton of juice. You came home, and found out the juice was poisoned.

According to this ruling, Safeway, the delivery company, the guy who moved the boxes, and everyone in between you and the manufacturer, are all at fault.

Isn't that plain crazy? Safeway has no control over the juice in the box, except for being able to follow their own guidelines on refrigeration, and check the expire date.

Short of manufacturing their own laptops, how is Amazon to ensure those batteries won't malfunction. How is your corner 7/11 able to ensure that your Gatorade does't have piss in it. How is your gas station able to ensure that those M&Ms you bough don't have nails in them?

If you make stores liable for the products they sell, it removes all the incentive to make good products. Manufacturers can ship anything, who cares, the stores are at fault!

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Amazon (and all the others you've mentioned) have the ability to choose their suppliers. There isn't piss in the Gatorade nor nails in the M&Ms because this is a solved problem: make companies liable for their supply chains.

Interesting. I view it as the opposite. Making the retailer liable forces them to use established supply chains and that is why we end up with M&Ms and other junk food at gas stations, instead of home-made buns, sandwiches and other food that doesn't come in a tube.

I am note sure what's the right answer. Just thinking out loud.

Retailers will keep Product Liability Insurance and make sure their suppliers have the same for this very reason. When a claim arises there are 2 perspectives:

1. The customer only has to deal with the place they bought from. 2. Every merchant up the chain will have to go through their liability insurance to figure out who pays out.

Consumer protection laws are this way for a reason and when they're respected they work really well.

Is this a common thing in the US? I am from Australia and the cost for managing individual product returns is a cost of business, something you take into account when pricing. There is an insurance product called 'Product Liability', but it's to insurance against large payouts, not individual returns.

Sorry, I was referring to the example that a product injures someone - as far as I know, yes, same in US, businesses have to eat the cost of returns.

That's pretty much the point of chain-of-custody systems, because everyone in that supply chain is involved in ensuring that food is safe. Chain of custody systems help identify the error which lead to an incident, and all parties are held accountable for their part in that process. For example:

- The store refrigerators may have lost power. Those products are now waste or potentially hazardous and must be tossed. (Otherwise risky, temperature can be tracked, but in a loss of power scenario is more difficult)

- The delivery truck broke down. Perhaps the temperature in the trailer went above acceptable food safety thresholds.

- The packaging company potentially stored a product outside of the coolers, leading to a food safety hazard.

etc.

Refrigerator trucks for food and many refrigerators in stores typically have chart recorders (or the digital equivalent) to keep track of historical temperature.

Some transportation companies even upload that to their freight dispatchers in real time.

> According to this ruling, Safeway, the delivery company, the guy who moved the boxes, and everyone in between you and the manufacturer, are all at fault.

I downvoted you because that's not what this ruling says. If you want to have an honest discussion be honest, don't use hyperbole.

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