Whose liability is it anyway?

New EU Commission legislation, in part based on the US model, should stimulate a greater need for product recall insurance. Tom Battell explains

Consumers might be surprised to find that manufacturers in the UK have only been liable for injury and damage caused by faulty products since 1987.

The Consumer Protection Act passed that year imposed a general safety duty upon manufacturers, regardless of any fault on the part of producers during the manufacture. After 1987, therefore, any company that made a defective product was held guilty and had to pay compensation unless it could prove it was innocent.

This principle of liability has since