Jeff Rasansky discusses manufacturer and retailer responsibility for a defective product.
Many products are manufactured and designed in an attempt to place profits ahead of consumer safety. Especially those products that are manufactured in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of units.
In most situations in Texas, the law is quite clear. It’s the manufacturer of the product who’s responsible. If you have a purely innocent retailer who has done nothing more than take the product “as is” and put it on their shelf, typically they will be held as an “innocent retailer” and will not be held responsible.
However, if the retailer has modified, or done anything to the product to make it dangerous, and not include the instructions or modify the instructions, they can be held accountable and responsible for putting the dangerous product into the stream of commerce.