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62.650 Strict Liability; Design Defect; Risk-Utility Test and Factors
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Description
62.650 Strict Liability; Design Defect; Risk-Utility Test and Factors To determine whether a product suffers from a design defect, you must balance the inherent risk of harm in a product design against the utility or benefits of that product design. You must decide whether the manufacturer acted reasonably in choosing a particular product design by considering all relevant evidence, including the following factors: a. the usefulness of the product; b. the severity of the danger posed by the design; c. the likelihood of that danger; d. the avoidability of the danger, considering the user's knowledge of the product, publicity surrounding the danger, the effectiveness of warnings, and common knowledge or the expectation of danger; e. the user's ability to avoid the danger; f. the technology available when the product was manufactured; g. the ability to eliminate the danger without impairing the product's usefulness or making it too expensive; h. the feasibility of spreading any increased cost through the product's price or by purchasing insurance; i. the appearance and aesthetic attractiveness of the product; j. the product's utility for multiple uses; k. the convenience and durability of the product; l. alternative designs for the product available to the manufacturer; and m. the manufacturer's compliance with industry standards or government regulations. If you decide that the risk of harm in the product's design outweighs the utility of that particular design, then the manufacturer exposed the consumer to greater risk of danger than the manufacturer should have in using that product design, and the product is defective. If after balancing the risks and utility of the product, you find by a preponderance of the evidence that the product suffered from a design defect, then the plaintiff is entitled to recover. Banks v. ICI Americas Inc., 264 Ga. 732 (1994)