The case brought to the 3rd Circuit involves a woman who bought a dog collar from a third-party Amazon vendor in December 2014. A few weeks later, the woman was walking her dog and the collar snapped, causing the retractable leash to recoil and injure her left eye, blinding her permanently on that side.
The third-party vendor, The Furry Gang, basically disappeared. Neither the woman nor Amazon was able to find a representative for the seller, which has not had an active Amazon account since May 2016, the court filing says.
The injured customer sued, saying Amazon should be held liable for a defective and dangerous product being sold without even including warnings that could make it safer. The District Court issued a summary judgement for Amazon, finding that it did not qualify as a "seller" under Pennsylvania liability law. The customer appealed.
The appeals court reversed the ruling, noting that "Amazon generally takes no precautions to ensure that third-party vendors are in good standing" under the law in the places they operate and that Amazon does not have a vetting process to ensure that vendors will cooperate with legal processes. The appeals court remanded the case back to the lower court to determine if the product was defective and what should be done about it.
The lawsuit and the ruling made two separate legal arguments against Amazon. The first had to do with the direct question: is Amazon liable as a merchant? But the other directly relates to the digital nature of the company: section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 has a clause that generally protects online platforms from liability from the content their users generate. The law specifies that a platform shall not be treated "as the publisher or speaker of any information" provided by someone else. This clause is why, for example, it's hard to sue Twitter over someone else's Tweets.
The original court ruling in Amazon's favor found the consumer's lawsuit against Amazon didn't fly under section 230, because she sought to hold Amazon liable "as the online publisher of third-party content."
The majority in the appeal found that section 230 barred some, but not all, of the plaintiff's claims. "Amazon's involvement in transactions extends beyond a mere editorial function," the court held. So to the extent that the negligence and strict liability claims "rely on Amazon's rule as an actor in the sales process, they are not barred" under section 230.
The Third Circuit ruling is a first for Amazon, which has faced similar suits before. Federal appeals courts ruled twice in just the past two months that Amazon was not liable for defective products sold by a third-party vendor.
In one instance, batteries in a headlamp malfunctioned and started a fire, which caused more than $300,000 in damages to a consumer's house. The homeowners' insurer sued Amazon to try to recoup the funds it paid out to the homeowner.
The appeals court for the 4th Circuit ruled in May that, while Amazon was not immune from lawsuits under section 230, it did not qualify under the law as the "seller" of the defective product and therefore was not liable under Maryland state law for selling defective products.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in June ruled similarly in a Tennessee case featuring an exploding hoverboard.
TL;DR: Plaintiff is trying to use different legal strategies to go after Amazon as standard consumer protection laws for defective products don't exactly cover Amazon's situation with disappearing 3rd party sellers and Amazon trying to avoid responsibility for defective products.
Submitted July 08, 2019 at 09:26PM by COMPUTER1313 https://ift.tt/2JnqqtG
