Peter Endig | AFP | Getty Images
A California court ruling could hardly make it harder for Amazon to take responsibility for unsafe products sold on its platform.
On Thursday, the California Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled that Amazon could be held liable for damage caused by a defective replacement laptop battery that refueled fire and set a woman on fire for a third degree. The woman, Angela Bolger, claims she bought the laptop battery from a third-party seller, Lenoge Technology HK Ltd., on the Amazon market.
The ruling deals with a major blow to Amazon, which for years has successfully fought lawsuits seeking to sue the company for defective products sold through its site that cause damage and business damage.
“Consumers across the nation will feel the impact of this,” said Jeremy Robinson, a lawyer for Bolger.
Amazon representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon’s sprawling marketplace, which hosts millions of third-party sellers, now serves about 60% of the company’s e-commerce sales. While the market has helped Amazon bring in record revenue, it has also proven that it hosts counterfeit, unsafe and even obsolete goods. The company has previously said it invests hundreds of millions of dollars a year to ensure products sold are safe and compliant.
Amazon has long maintained that it is merely the channel between buyers and sellers in its market and that it is not involved in the sourcing or distribution of products sold by third-party sellers, and removing it from liability. It has been a successful defense for Amazon in the past, including in a 2018 case regarding the purchase of a defective hoverboard that exploded and burned an Amazon shopper home in Tennessee.
The company is still dealing with several ongoing cases of product claims in state and federal courts across the country.
In Bolger’s case, the court ruled that Amazon placed itself in “the chain of distribution” of the defective laptop battery by, among other things, storing the product in its warehouses, receiving payment and shipping the product, as well as “the set conditions “of their relationship” with the seller of third parties and demand “substantial fees on each purchase. ”
“Whatever term we also use to describe the role of Amazon, whether it was ‘retailer’, ‘distributor’, if only ‘facilitator’, it was important to bring the product here to the consumer,” the court said. “Under established principles of strict liability, Amazon should be held liable if a product sold through its website is found to be defective.”
The court also found that Amazon could not be held liable under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1990s law that protects online platforms from being held liable for content that users access to their sites. place.
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