Product Liability in UK Law

There may be room for disputation as to whether the likelihood of intermediate examination and consequent actual discovery of the defect has the effect of negativing a duty of care or of breaking the chain of causation ( compare Farr v. Butters Brothers & Co. [1932] 2 K.B. 606 with Denny v. Supplies & Transport Co. Ltd. [1950] 2 K.B. 374).

If the same principle applies in the field of real property to the liability of the builder of a permanent structure which is dangerously defective, that liability can only arise if the defect remains hidden until the defective structure causes personal injury or damage to property other than the structure itself.

For this purpose it does not matter how the product is made or what form it takes. The monopoly covers every method of manufacture and every form which comes within the description in the claim. So claim 24 includes the making of the acid metabolite in one's liver just as much as making it by synthetic process; in the body as well as in isolation. Nor does it matter whether or not the infringer knows that he is making, using etc. the patented product.

In short, therefore, Arrow seeks a declaration that its own product was obvious at the priority date of the divisional applications. Such a declaration would give Arrow the security that dealing with its own alendronate product in this country will not give rise to any liability to Merck for infringement of any patent granted pursuant to the divisional applications or any further divisionals arising under them.

So the question of principle is this: in cases which exhibit the five features I have mentioned, which rule would be more in accordance with justice and the policy of common law and statute to protect employees against the risk of contracting asbestos-related diseases?

Sixthly, the principle applies where the other possible source of the claimant's injury is a similar wrongful act or omission of another person, but it can also apply where, as in McGhee, the other possible source of the injury is a similar, but lawful, act or omission of the same defendant. I reserve my opinion as to whether the principle applies where the other possible source of injury is a similar but lawful act or omission of someone else or a natural occurrence.

The second is commonly known as the threefold test: whether loss to the claimant was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of what the defendant did or failed to do; whether the relationship between the parties was one of sufficient proximity; and whether in all the circumstances it is fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty of care on the defendant towards the claimant (what Kirby J in Perre v Apand Pty Ltd [1999] HCA 36, (1999) 198 CLR 180, para 259, succinctly labelled "policy").