CT Supreme Court Clarifies Pleading Requirements For Products Liability Claims

A plaintiff who raises a products-liability claim must ordinarily come forward with evidence of some specific design or manufacturing defect in the product at issue. In cases where evidence of a specific defect is unavailable, however, plaintiffs often attempt to get past summary judgment by arguing that the product must have had some unspecified and indeterminate defect under the "malfunction theory" of products liability.1 Thanks to the successful advocacy of Day Pitney's Paul Williams and John Cerreta, plaintiffs' ability to inject the malfunction theory into products-liability cases at the summary-judgment stage should now be more limited, under the Connecticut Supreme Court's September 15 decision in White v. Mazda Motor of America, Inc., 2014 WL 4548058 (Conn. 2014). In White, the plaintiff claimed that, as he was checking the conditions under the hood of his automobile, his vehicle caught fire and ignited a "small blast," which then caused the plaintiff...