Business Law 16th Edition by Jane Mallor,James Barnes ,Arlen Langvardt,Jamie Darin Prenkert,Martin McCrory

تمرين 12

Rita Emeterio bought disposable butane lighters for use at her bar. Her daughter, Gloria Hernandez, took lighters from the bar time to time for her personal use. Hernandez's five-year-old daughter, Daphne, took a lighter from her mother's purse on the top shelf of a closet in her grandparents' home. Using the lighter, Daphne started a fire in which her twoyear-old brother, Ruben, was severely burned. On Ruben's behalf, Hernandez sued the manufacturers and distributors of the lighter, Tokai Corporation and Scripto-Tokai Corporation (collectively, "Tokai"), in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. Asserting a strict liability claim, Hernandez alleged that the lighter was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous because it did not have a child-resistant safety mechanism that would have prevented or substantially reduced the likelihood of a child's using it to start a fire. Tokai moved for summary judgment, contending that a disposable lighter is a simple household took intended for adult use only, and that a manufacturer has no duty to incorporate child-resistant features into a lighters design to protect unintended users-children-from obvious and inherent dangers. Tokai also noted that adequate warnings against access by children were provided with its lighters, even though that danger was obvious and commonly known. In response to Tokai's motion, Hernandez argued that because an alternative design in existence at the time the lighter at issue was manufactured and distributed would have made the lighter safer in the hands of children, it remained for the jury to decide whether the lighter was defective under Texas's common-law risk-utility test. The federal district court granted summary judgment for Tokai. Hernandez appealed to the United States Supreme Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit then certified the following question of state law to the Supreme Court of Texas:
Under the Texas Products Liability Act of 1993, can the legal representative of a minor child injured as a result of the misuse of a product by another minor child maintain a defective-design products liability claim against the product's manufacturer where the product was intended to be used only by adults, the risk that children might misuse the product was obvious to the product's manufacturer and to its intended users, and a safer alternative design was available?
How did the Supreme Court of Texas answer the certified question?