COFFMAN v. ARMSTRONG INTERNATIONAL, INC.: TENNESSEE ADOPTS THE BARE METAL DEFENSE
Volume 95, No. 3, Spring 2023
By Soumya Parvathi Venkateswaran [PDF]

When a product manufacturer makes, sells, or distributes a potentially dangerous product, and it fails to warn about that product’s dangers—unsurprisingly—that manufacturer can be held liable for its failure to warn.1 After all, it was the manufacturer’s own product, so imposing liability on that party seems fair. But who should we hold liable when a manufacturer’s nondangerous product requires a potentially dangerous third-party component part to function, and someone is seriously injured by the latter? Does the manufacturer have a duty to warn—and can it be held liable for failing to warn—about the potential dangers arising from the component part that the manufacturer did not make, sell, or distribute? This question “remains a fiercely debated and unsettled issue in products liability litigation.”

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