CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT ADOPTS "SOPHISTICATED USER" DEFENSE

The California Supreme Court today unanimously adopted the "sophisticated user" doctrine in failure to warn cases.  The doctrine negates a manufacturer's duty to warn of a potential danger posed by a product where the plaintiff has, or should have had, advance knowledge of a product's inherent hazards.

William Keith Johnson was a trained and certified heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) technician.  He claimed that various chemical suppliers and manufacturers and HVAC manufacturers should have warned him that servicing an air conditioner evaporator would create harmful phosgene gas, a danger he claimed not to know about. The Court of Appeal affirmed the grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants, on the ground they had no duty to warn of a danger generally known or reasonably expected to be known by members of Johnson's profession.

In Johnson v. American Standard, Case No. S139184, the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in American Standard's favor, and adopted the sophisticated user doctrine as an outgrowth of the "obvious and known danger" rule.

The Supreme Court held that the sophisticated user doctrine applies equally to negligence and strict liability failure to warn claims, and that the focus should be on "whether the plaintiff knew, or should have known, of the particular risk of harm from the product giving rise to the injury." (Typed opn., p. 16.)  The court acknowledged that, under this standard, "there will be some users who were actually unaware of the dangers.  However, the same could be said of the currently accepted obvious danger rule; obvious dangers are obvious to most, but are not obvious to absolutely everyone."  (Id.)  Finally, a sophisticated user's knowledge of the risk should be measured "from the time of the plaintiff's injury, rather than from the date the product was manufactured."  (Id. at p. 20.)

Horvitz & Levy LLP filed an amicus brief in support of American Standard on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, American Chemistry Council, American International Companies, Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, ExxonMobil, and Honeywell International, Inc. Click here to read the decision. For further information, please contact Horvitz & Levy partners David Axelrad (daxelrad@horvitzlevy.com) or M.C. Sungaila (msungaila@horvitzlevy.com).

Click here to visit Horvitz & Levy's punitive damages blog, http://www.calpunitives.com/.

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