The Consumer Protection Act 1987 Part I 241(iii) Industrial processors of agricultural produce.
(iv) ‘Own branders’ who add their label to products which they did not produce.
(v) Anyone who imports the product into the EU.
If more than one of these people are liable they are jointly and severally liable. This means
that the injured person can sue any or all of them. Retailers who are not own-branders will
not be liable under the Act. Retailers who sold an unsafe product would be liable for breach
of s. 14(2) SGA 1979.
Defective products
Section 3 says that products can be regarded as defective if their safety is not such as
persons generally are entitled to expect. Products include not only finished products but
also component parts of another product and raw materials. For example, a new car is a
product, but so is the battery in the car and the rubber from which the tyres were made.
The court will consider all the circumstances when deciding whether or not the objective
standard which the Act requires has been breached. The Act does, however, mention a
number of factors to be considered, including the following:
(i) The way in which the product was marketed.
(ii) Instructions and warnings issued with the product.
(iii) What might reasonably be expected to be done with the product.
(iv) The time at which the product was supplied.
This last factor is designed to give some protection to manufacturers producing new
products. These are not to be considered unsafe just because later products were safer. This
is linked to the controversial ‘development risks’ defence, which is considered below.
Abouzaid vMothercare (UK) Ltd (2000) (Court of Appeal)A 12-year-old boy was trying to fit a child’s sleeping bag to a pushchair. The defendants
had manufactured the sleeping bag, which was designed to be fitted to pushchairs by the
use of elastic straps. One of the elastic straps had a metal buckle on the end. The boy let
go of the straps while trying to join the straps together. The metal buckle hit the boy in the
eye, causing serious injury.
HeldThe product was defective. The risk of serious injury to the eye meant that the
product’s safety was not such as persons generally were entitled to expect. The Court of
Appeal noted that the way the product was designed allowed such an accident to happen,
that the straps did not need to be made of elastic and that instructions could have warned
of the danger.Tesco Stores Ltd and another vPollard (2006) (Court of Appeal)A 13-month-old toddler was injured on account of eating dishwasher powder. The Court
of Appeal accepted the judge’s finding that the toddler’s mother had not negligently left
the bottle open, but did not seem entirely to believe this. The dishwasher powder had been
t