Johnson v. American Standard, Inc.

Opinion

CHIN, J.

This product liability action raises a question of first impression in California: whether we should adopt the “sophisticated user” doctrine and defense to negate a manufacturer’s duty to warn of a product’s potential danger when the plaintiff has (or should have) advance knowledge of the product’s inherent hazards. The defense is specifically applied to plaintiffs who knew or should have known of the product’s hazards, and it acts as an exception to manufacturers’ general duty to warn consumers. (See Rest.2d Torts, § 402A.)

The federal courts have adopted the doctrine as an…