Manufacturing Or Production Defects And Design Defects

There are generally few difficulties in applying the consumer expectation test of s 3(1) of the 1987 Act to manufacturing or production defects. Thus it can be said that: ‘persons generally are clearly entitled to expect that a product conform with the standard of safety common to the items of a same line of products marketed by a particular manufacturer: an individual product which fails to comply with such a standard because it was not produced and marketed as intended will no doubt be considered defective’. Or to put it another way, in the form of an example, ‘no reasonable or “ordinary” consumer expects to find a snail in a bottle of ginger beer’, or, for that matter, carbolic acid in a bottle of lemonade. Accordingly, when the defect is a manufacturing one the consumer expectation test may be straightforward in its application and advantageous.