Strict Product Liability: Balancing Innovation With Consumer Protection
- IJLLR Journal
- Apr 8
- 1 min read
Rupali Singh Sengar, LL.M., School of Law, Govt. J. Yoganandam Chhattisgarh College, Raipur
ABSTRACT
Strict product liability is a continuous negotiation between risk, cost, and responsibility. The burden to prove the fault has been undoubtedly shifted towards consumers. Defects are not always the result of a single flawed design choice; they can emerge from cumulative, small failures across sourcing, assembly, and distribution.
What tends to get lost in doctrinal accounts is how firms actually respond on the ground. In some sectors, sustained exposure to liability has led to tangible improvements—more rigorous testing protocols, clearer risk disclosures, and internal compliance systems that did not exist a decade ago. The relationship between liability and innovation, in that sense, is not linear. It turns on how courts interpret the idea of a “defect,” how regulators signal acceptable risk, and how businesses, often conservatively, price the possibility of litigation into their decisions.
Keywords: Strict product liability; consumer protection; product safety regulation; defective products; risk allocation; negligence and fault standards; innovation and technological development; emerging technologies; legal frameworks; law of torts.
