Cause: His eating two bags of microwave popcorn each day for ten years. Effect: Overexposure. I'm good with the jury finding him 99.99999% at fault and requiring him to pay the majority of the 'damages' to the public for his stupidity - oh, and the microwave popcorn maker can toss in a free case of product. Might even raise the product's status to 'contributing factor'. But to assign blame to the manufacturer only and steal money from the company? Just goes beyond any common sense.
Sorry, your logic doesn’t hold.
Lets change the product, lets say the guy ate 2 apples a day and developed a condition that is known, and only known to occur to those exposed to chemicals used as pesticides in apples. Would you sit there and say oh its the persons fault for eating 2 apples a day??
The link between chemicals in microwave popcorn, and this particular health condition are so well known, that as I have stated before even OSHA has explicite safety protocols in factories regarding them. This condition is known to be caused by high levels and frequent exposure to these chemicals. No microwave popcorn manufacturer has ever listed any warning regarding their products being potentially harmful, so to claim the consumer should know that eating 2 bags of popcorn a day would cause “popcorn lung” is nonsense.
The manufacturers clearly know the risks of exposure to these chemicals, as does the government. The belief that levels of exposure had to be very high and sustained to cause the illness meant they didn’t want to put it on their products warning for fear it would impact sales, and their risk reward analysis said the risk is incredibly low a consumer would develop this condition. Turns out, like it or not, while the risk was low, it clearly could happen from using their product at the consumer level.
You and I may not eat 2 bags of popcorn a day, but hardly would I think any reasonable person eating 2 bags of popcorn a day could reasonably know or expect to develop a condition that the general public for the most part has never heard of, but the industry and government know all too well. If the guy was suing because he got obese from eating 2 bags of popcorn a day, I’d be right with you, but that’s not the case here.
You cannot make a strong argument the plaintiff wasn’t taking personal responsibility because the risk was never communicated to him. In fact, before this article hit the wire, I bet you 99.99% of consumers would have no idea what PopCorn lung was or what caused it. Unless you worked in the industry, or regulatory oversight of it, or were a doctor who treated it, odds of you having any idea this condition even existed, let alone its cause were next to nil.
A smoker sues a tobacco company, they rightly should be told go get bent, you knew the risks and took them. However if the risks are never given to the consumer, you can’t make that argument.
Cause: His eating two bags of microwave popcorn each day for ten years. Effect: Overexposure. I’m good with the jury finding him 99.99999% at fault and requiring him to pay the majority of the ‘damages’ to the public for his stupidity - oh, and the microwave popcorn maker can toss in a free case of product. Might even raise the product’s status to ‘contributing factor’. But to assign blame to the manufacturer only and steal money from the company? Just goes beyond any common sense.
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Well in many group homes and hospitals where ventilation is not good, staff pop up to 8 bags of popcorn an hour each evening.
Of course blame is assigned only to the manufacturer, if the manufacturer does not notify the consumer of a hazard that is well known to them and could be easily avoided if the consumer were made aware.