Amazon argues it’s not liable for product that severely injured toddler

> Amazon argued yesterday before the Texas Supreme Court that it should not be held liable for defective products sold through its site.

Is this east Texas, where patent trolls can buy judges? :)

> The toddler’s mother purchased the knockoff Apple TV remote from a third-party seller called “USA Shopping.” After the battery burned her daughter, she sought to find out who was behind the Amazon storefront, discovering that it was run by one “Hu Xi Jie” out of Shenzhen, China. Neither the mother nor Amazon has been able to locate or contact Hu Xi Jie.

Amazon 150% liable. They know they have this problem and have had it for years, yet they continue to allow foreign operators to pose as local, and to misrepresent their origin and the authenticity of products.

This is overdue. A product we bought on Amazon (that was subsequently pulled) almost burned our house down.

It’s from a no-name manufacturer, and we did not receive a recall notice (which Amazon could have trivially provided).

We reported the issue, and didn’t hear back.

I'm not sure what's the point of such case. Aren't there consumer-safety certifications in the US?

If the product passed such certifications, why should Amazon be liable?

OTOH, if the product is fake, or Amazon is selling products without such certifications, then they should be liable. Unless it's a 3rd party seller that handles everything - but then, Amazon should vet sellers a bit (how to contact them? who are they, really? etc). I expect a virtual storefront in my own country to abide to my country's laws.

Any sympathy I might have had for Amazon is blackholed, due to their reviews being so profoundly compromised.

eg: 5k positive reviews for a different product than the listing

I think they’re going to lose this. One of the most basic concepts we covered in contract law in the crappy undergraduate business school was the tort responsibility through the entire lifecycle of a product.

If I have a lemonade stand and sell defective lemonade, I’m liable for it. Even the defect was caused by the lemonade mix, even if the defect was caused by the red dye #5 manufacturer. We’re all liable, not just the root.

For reselling original products - I'd say manufacturer is more liable.

For peddling fakes and knockoffs - amazon first, then reseller and manufacturer of crap should be liable.

Everyone knows that amazon is peddling fakes, cultivating fake reviews and ratings and takes zero-to-negative effort to remedy any of that.

Amazon gets the full legal bill and they can settle it with their respective source entities and "partners"

In this case the a toddler swallowed a lithium ion button cell, so I wonder how how this counts as a products being defective as those batteries are designed to be removable?

If the woman I bought some of the same batteries off of Amazon and her child swallowed one of the batteries, surely Amazon wouldn't be liable. So why are there in this case?