Product Liability

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Tobias Voigt
• Subject Area: Private Law
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 542588851

The paper examines the process of increasing specific legislation on liability rules in the course of current developments, in particular advancing digitalization. Starting from general liability law, the paper places the ongoing reform discussion on European and national product liability law in the context of the private law system. It draws the eternal task of private liability law to balance the conflicting interests of promoting technology and innovation on the one hand, and consumer protection on the other, in times of rapid technical and scientific progress. It elaborates the lines of the different currents for the design of future regulation, shows their effects on the system of liability law and thus offers fundamental approaches for responsible future lawmaking. First, the study examines current systemic questions about the functioning and effectiveness of the regulation of the actions of private legal entities for the area of product liability in national law and at the European level. In accordance with traditional German liability law, case law shapes group- and profession-specific standards of care under fault-based liability for private actions. In this way, it ensures a high level of safety in private legal relations and, at the same time, promotes the professionalization of various activities. However, socio-economic change and the growing social protection and participation claims of citizens against the state in the 20th century have also produced a plethora of regulations in public order and security law. Especially under European influence, product liability has long since moved away from the traditional fault-based liability of national character. Against serious forces of persistence, the paper shows that the Product Liability Directive already in 1985 suggested a conceptual design of product liability in the member states as strict liability, and that more recent case law is increasingly following this path. For the first time, the paper takes a critical look at the opportunities and risks of this new understanding in recent judicature. It demonstrates that the indeterminate concept of product defect permits both an expansion of the fault- and conduct-based concept of the formation of profession-specific safety standards and, at the same time, is also suitable for establishing an extensive level of protection that approximates strict liability in special risk situations on a case-by-case basis. On this basis, the paper discusses recent reform proposals on European product liability law. It shows the advantages of the current law and its expandability through case law compared to rigid new regulations in specific areas. The latter narrow the view to vaguely defined special problems of digitization and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) as well as autonomous systems. Instead of unbalancing cross-sectoral product liability through far-reaching heteronomous regulatory requirements, the current law is able[...]

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants