Product liability
You are liable for a defect in your products. If they cause harm to your customers: death, personal injury or material damage to personal belongings (exceeding €500), your company could be liable.
The defectiveness of your products is determined by the lack of safety which the consumers are entitled to expect, not by their fitness for use.
Take care when you:
- manufacture a final product
- manufacture parts to be incorporated into another product
- import a product into the EU for further sale.
If more than one business is responsible for the safety of the same product, the injured party can take any of them to court.
Liability rules also apply to electricity and agricultural products. Your sales contract may not contain terms that reduce your responsibility for a defective product.
Compensation claims
To claim compensation for damage suffered, the injured party must prove that:
- damage took place
- your product was defective
- the defect and the damage were linked.
Sample story
A compensation claim for faulty scooters
Zephir owns a company that manufactures electric scooters. One customer was injured when the scooter’s brakes failed during use. After filing a compensation claim, the customer proved the injury occurred, the brakes were defective, and the defect directly caused the accident. An investigation confirmed the defect existed when the product was placed on the market, and Zephir's company was held liable for compensation.
The injured party has 3 years to claim compensation, starting on the day they became aware of:
- the damage;
- the defect;
- the identity of the producer.
You are no longer responsible for damage caused by your product once it has been on the market for 10 years, unless someone has claimed compensation from you during that period.
Cases when you are not liable
You bear no liability if you can prove that:
- you did not place the product on the market
- you did not manufacture the product for sale
- the defect causing the damage did not exist when the product was placed on the market
- the defect arose only because your product had to fulfil mandatory technical requirements
- according to the latest scientific and technical standards, no one could have foreseen the defect when you placed the product on the market
- you manufactured only one component, and the defect was the result of the design of the final product.
Sample story
Proving non-liability: When a defect isn’t your fault
Anaïs manufactures seatbelt components. After a car accident, the injured driver claimed the seatbelt malfunctioned.
Investigators found that the defect was caused by the car’s design, not Anaïs’s component. She proved her product was not defective when placed on the market, and the defect arose from factors beyond her control. As a result, Anaïs was not held liable.
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