Advertisement
‘Giant can of worms’: Amazon’s battle against product recalls is on
- The US Consumer Product Safety Commission seeks to compel Amazon to take part in formal recalls of defective products sold by merchants on its platform
- It also seeks a precedent-setting ruling that Amazon is a distributor of consumer products and directly responsible for what is sold on its platform
Reading Time:5 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
A United States safety regulator’s decision last week to sue Amazon.com could bring clarity to a question that has long befuddled the country’s courts and state legislatures: who is responsible when a product bought from the world’s largest online retailer hurts or kills someone?
In recent years, dozens of people who say they were harmed by products — including exploding hoverboards, defective batteries and faulty dog collars — have sued Amazon for compensation.
The company argues it is not liable, pointing instead to the third-party sellers that technically sold the items and are sometimes based overseas beyond the reach of US jurisprudence. Several courts have agreed with Amazon, citing product liability laws that never contemplated online shopping or digital middlemen.
But last week, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) sued Amazon, seeking to compel the company to participate in formal recalls of dozens of defective products sold by merchants on its sprawling marketplace.
The regulator is also seeking what would be a precedent-setting ruling: that Amazon is a distributor of consumer products under federal law, a designation that would subject the company to future mandatory recalls on behalf of its sellers. Declaring Amazon a distributor would upend a commonplace tech industry defence deployed by online companies from Facebook to Google, which claim they are not responsible for what is said, posted or sold on their platforms.
Advertisement