[myself248]

How's that? If I buy something from Home Depot and it later turns out to have been defective and injured me in some way, I absolutely can sue Home Depot.

The fact that Amazon has tried to position themself in such a way as to take my money and ship me a product but "they're not really the seller" should be immaterial. They walk like a seller, they quack like a seller, I should be able to sue them like a seller.

Ditto Paypal and banking regulations. Someday, I hope.

[glofish]

I would disagree with this sentiment.

While I don't know what law says here - but, in my opinion, the mere act of selling a legal product by a merchant should not imply that the merchant is liable for all possible damages that the product may cause.

If I were on jury in a case like this I would consider punishing the merchant only of there is some sort of negligence on their part. For example not pulling the product after it has been demonstrated to be unsafe.

[vonmoltke]

The implied warranty of merchantability[1] applies to all merchants, not just manufacturers. In the case of a reseller like Home Depot or Amazon, a consumer can seek recourse from the reseller, and the reseller can in turn seek recourse from their supplier, and so on up the chain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty#United_States...

[glofish]

the question here is of course, how should one classify a manufacturing defect that affects a tiny percentage of the product?

Is that a merchantability issue? Is it realistic for a merchant to test every single product so extensively to uncover a defect of such a rare occurance?

One of the greatest ingredients of justice in the USA is that laws can be interpreted by a jury. I would most certainly vote against applying this "merchantability" blindly - without more context and more proof of negligence beyond simply stocking a product. If one in a hundred thousand catches on fire and the product is pulled makes for a very different story than if every other ignites yet they keep selling it.

[TheCoelacanth]

They don't need to individually test every single product, they just need to make sure that they can turn around and sue the supplier if the product turns out too be defective. If they have no means to hold their suppliers accountable for the quality of the product, then they should be testing every single product.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

I was of the same opinion as you, but from what I read online, anyone in the distribution chain of a defective product can be liable for damages caused by it.

https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/personal-injury/strict-...

[glofish]

Of course, I am not advocating that a merchant should never be liable for a product defect. All I am saying that there may be many mitigating or aggravating circumstances.

Note how the law that you cite also says "could be liable" - not that it is always liable.

I am also quite convinced that the "let's sue Amazon" bandwagon has a lot more to do with Amazon being a gigantic retailer with potentially large payoffs rather than the merits of the case.

Would you be so eager to sue the only retailer in your town, that is half broke, almost going out of business, that you happen to also need the most.

[myself248]

If that hometown retailer put a bunch of MoreFire Fraudbatteries in the box with genuine Duracells and labeled them as genuine Duracells and then they burned my house down, yes I absolutely would be so eager.

Providing a platform that is engineered to confuse, conceal, and mix counterfeit and dangerous products in with genuine and legitimately-tested ones, and then insulate the "real seller" from even being found much less held liable, I feel should make Amazon culpable in a very large way. It's not like they don't know their platform is being used this way.

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, and I hope the law finds them malicious.

[glofish]

> bunch of MoreFire Fraudbatteries in the box with genuine Duracells and labeled them as genuine Duracells and then they burned my house down,

I don't think the analogy is matching what has been claimed to have happened. Which elements of the real story correspond to the fake product having been partially mixed by the retailer with "genuine" then mislabeled as "genuine" by the retailer?

The analogy is more like: your hometown grocer sells fresh lettuce that they buy from a distributor. One week a small fraction of these turn out to be contaminated with E-Coli leading to various hospitalizations. The grocer pulls the product from the shelf. Is your grocer still liable for negligence?

This is my interpretation of what happened.

[myself248]

If the grocery store signs up with a new lettuce distributor, whose FDA paperwork is covered in Wite-Out but nobody at the store calls the FDA to see if it's legit, and who seems to have only been in the lettuce business for two weeks, and whose trucks are freshly painted, and whose proprietor looks a lot like the proprietor of a recently-disgraced lettuce distributor who was in trouble for peddling contaminated lettuce but THIS GUY wears a DIFFERENT HAT so it's definitely not him...

Then yes, the grocery store absolutely has been negligent.

As a consumer, it is not within my capability to find and verify the bona fides of the distributor. That information stops at the grocery store's back room. It is incumbent on the grocery store to do at least the most basic checks and act on them. I as the consumer am not buying lettuce from the distributor in the back room, I am buying it from the grocery store at the checkout lane up front.

Acting like nobody knew it was possible to get sick from dodgy lettuce, or like there was a whole health-and-safety regime to try to prevent that, and failing to diligently confirm that this distributor's safety certs were authentic, is the DEFINITION of negligence.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> All I am saying that there may be many mitigating or aggravating circumstances.

Apparently not, at least according to the article I linked you. The legal theory under which a retailer would be liable is strict liability. That means that even if they did their absolute best to only sell safe goods, they are still liable for damages. I'm not commenting on whether that's good or bad, but it is how it is.

> I am also quite convinced that the "let's sue Amazon" bandwagon has a lot more to do with Amazon being a gigantic retailer with potentially large payoffs rather than the merits of the case.

The ability of the respondent to pay is a valid consideration when considering the target of a lawsuit. I'm sure some of the glee at the prospect on this site does come from the anti-corporate sentiment that's common on here, but that doesn't change the calculus of choosing a lawsuit target.