Georgia Product Liability Case Law: 30 Court Decisions on Defective Products and Warnings

Georgia’s product liability law starts with a statute. OCGA § 51-1-11 makes the manufacturer of a product sold as new answerable to a person injured because the product was defective when sold, and, as the Supreme Court of Georgia said of the statute’s predecessor in 1975, the claimant “is not required to prove negligence.” The same statute closes that claim ten years after the product’s first sale for use or consumption, and negligence claims against manufacturers run alongside it. The 30 appellate decisions below show how Georgia courts have decided who answers as a manufacturer, how a design is judged, when a warning is owed and whether it was enough, how a defect is proved, and when the ten-year statute of repose ends a claim.

The decisions do not all point one way. By this page’s count, 12 favored the injured person or the family on the question decided, 12 favored the manufacturer or seller, and six went partly each way. Seventeen are decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia and 13 of the Court of Appeals of Georgia. Four of the Supreme Court decisions (Nos. 3, 8, 27 and 29) answered questions of Georgia law certified by federal courts; they state the law without deciding the underlying case. Each summary links to the opinion in the Caselaw Access Project’s reporter text or in the court’s PDF as archived by CourtListener.

The Statute Today

The passages of § 51-1-11 quoted on this page match the text published by FindLaw as current on March 28, 2024, and the annual summaries of general statutes enacted in 2024, 2025 and 2026, published by the Georgia General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Counsel, list no amendment to §§ 51-1-11 or 51-1-11.1. The 2025 summary lists Senate Bill 144 (Act 94), which enacted OCGA § 2-7-171. As passed, the bill provides that beginning on January 1, 2026, a registered pesticide whose label “has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency in registering the pesticide or is consistent with the most recent human health risk assessment performed under FIFRA shall be deemed a sufficient warning label for the purposes of an action commenced under any provision of state law concerning the duty to warn or label, or any other common law duty to warn.” That rule does not apply when the Environmental Protection Agency has determined that a manufacturer “knowingly withheld, concealed, misrepresented, or destroyed material information regarding the human health risks of such pesticide in order to obtain or maintain approval of its label.” The pesticide case below (No. 9) was decided in 1994.

Who Answers Under the Statute

As the Supreme Court of Georgia quoted it in 2011, OCGA § 51-1-11 (b) (1) provides: “The manufacturer of any personal property sold as new property directly or through a dealer or any other person shall be liable in tort, irrespective of privity, to any natural person who may use, consume, or reasonably be affected by the property and who suffers injury to his person or property because the property when sold by the manufacturer was not merchantable and reasonably suited to the use intended, and its condition when sold is the proximate cause of the injury sustained.” A separate statute, OCGA § 51-1-11.1, which applies to causes of action accruing on or after July 1, 1987, provides that a “product seller” is not a manufacturer for purposes of strict liability. The first decision below applied the predecessor of § 51-1-11, then numbered Code Ann. § 105-106. The six decisions address what the statute requires, which transactions it reaches, who may recover, when a company that assembled or sold a product answers as its manufacturer, and what a retailer’s implied warranty covers.

1. Center Chemical Co. v. Parzini (1975)

Center Chemical Co. v. Parzini, 234 Ga. 868, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided September 2, 1975

Parzini and another person were trying to open a plastic bottle of industrial drain cleaner made of almost pure sulphuric acid. Parzini held the bottle tightly while the other person removed the cap with pliers; the top came loose suddenly, and the acid squirted over Parzini and severely burned him. The jury found for the manufacturer. The Court of Appeals reversed, reasoning that merchantability could include the question whether a drain solvent of 95 to 99.5 percent sulphuric acid was “unmerchantable and dangerous because too potent for ordinary use.”

That was the wrong question, the Supreme Court held. The statute spares the injured person from proving negligence, “[h]owever, the manufacturer is not an insurer,” and the phrase “not merchantable and reasonably suited to the use intended” means “that the plaintiff must show that the manufacturer’s product when sold by the manufacturer was defective.” Many products cannot be made completely safe, yet “may be useful and desirable,” and “[i]f they are properly prepared, manufactured, packaged and accompanied with adequate warnings and instructions, they can not be said to be defective.” The questions were whether the drain cleaner was defective in its manufacture, its packaging or its warnings, and whether Parzini knew of a defect and its danger and used the product unreasonably anyway. The Court vacated the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remanded. In 1994, Banks v. ICI Americas (No. 9) held that this analysis would no longer be used in design defect cases.

2. Robert F. Bullock, Inc. v. Thorpe (1987)

Robert F. Bullock, Inc. v. Thorpe, 256 Ga. 744, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided March 4, 1987

Thorpe, an employee of a Bennigan’s restaurant, was burned by boiling oil from a deep fat fryer made by Robert F. Bullock, Inc. The restaurant had not bought the fryer. Bullock had placed it in the kitchen on a trial basis in hopes of making a sale, and it contended that the statute’s word “sold” limited the transactions the statute covers.

Neither title nor payment decided the matter. The Court held that “when a manufacturer in the business of marketing its product to an intended consumer offers the use of the product on a trial basis in order to make a sale, OCGA § 51-1-11 can be applied in a suit for an alleged injury occurring during the trial use.” It did not address bailments and leases in other situations. Chief Justice Marshall dissented.

3. Jones v. NordicTrack, Inc. (2001)

Jones v. NordicTrack, Inc., 274 Ga. 115, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided July 16, 2001

In May 1995 William Jones bought a NordicTrack ski exerciser, and the couple placed it in their recreation room. Its chrome front legs, about one inch square, projected straight up so that the machine could be raised to create the effect of skiing uphill. On July 3, 1996, Laura Jeanne Jones was walking through the room when she fell against the machine, and a blunt chrome leg penetrated the back of her right thigh and buttock, severing two veins and damaging an artery and a nerve. A federal district court ruled for NordicTrack on the pleadings because the machine was not in use, and the federal court of appeals asked the Supreme Court of Georgia whether a product must be in use for its maker to be liable.

Use is not required. “[I]n a products liability action for defective design the focus is not on use of the product,” the Court answered. The statute reaches any natural person who may “use, consume, or reasonably be affected by” a product, and “a product need not be ‘in use’ for a manufacturer to be held liable in negligence or strict liability for injuries proximately caused by the product.” Chief Justice Fletcher, concurring, wrote that the answer does not mean every such claim must go to a jury: “Manufacturers do not need to make all household products rounded, plastic, and padded.”

4. Dean v. Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing, Inc. (2000)

Dean v. Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing, Inc., 246 Ga. App. 255, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 4, 2000

Johnny Dean was injured when a forklift backed into him as he walked out of a storage room at work. He claimed that the forklift should have come with a back-up alarm as standard equipment; the dealer had offered his employer an optional alarm, and the employer declined it. After a first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, the trial court granted summary judgment to Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing, which said it assembled forklifts to designs by another Toyota company and was a mere seller, and which also argued that Dean knew the forklifts had no alarms.

Each ground failed on appeal. Toyota Industrial alone assembled the forklift, had described itself as the manufacturer before trial, and did not explain its relationship to the company it said designed the machine, so it had not shown that it was a mere product seller; “[a] defendant can be both a manufacturer and a seller simultaneously.” Whether Dean, who testified that he had no idea the forklift was behind him, assumed the risk was for a jury. And an engineer’s testimony that alarms cost $30 to $100 on a forklift worth about $20,000 and were standard on Nissan forklifts meant that the design question could not be decided as a matter of law: “Where there is some evidence that the risk caused by not having an alarm outweighed the utility of the forklift in not having an alarm, the issue of negligent design cannot be decided as a matter of law.” The judgment was reversed.

5. Boyce v. Gregory Poole Equipment Co. (2004)

Boyce v. Gregory Poole Equipment Co., 269 Ga. App. 891, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided September 24, 2004

Gregory Poole Equipment, a Caterpillar dealer, sold Ecolab four stand-up forklifts in 1994 without an optional rear guard door, a metal plate whose only purpose was to keep objects out of the operator’s compartment. Material Handling Associates had designed and built the forklift in a joint venture with Caterpillar, and the dealer’s general manager sat on an advisory board for the design team. On January 2, 1998, the raised forks of a parked forklift entered the compartment of the stand-up unit that Ecolab employee Robyn Embry was operating; they speared his leg, severing an artery, and he bled to death. According to the court’s account of the evidence, the dealer had studied Ecolab’s plant and advised on equipment without discussing the guard door before the sale, and in 1996, after another employee was hurt, it supplied written material that gave a negative impression of the guard door.

As a dealer selling a product another company made, Gregory Poole was a product seller and not strictly liable, and a seat on the design team’s advisory board did not make it a manufacturer: “Strict product liability applies only to the product manufacturer or designer.” The negligence claims stood differently. Having investigated the plant and advised Ecolab, the dealer may have assumed a duty to use ordinary care in its recommendations, and whether it should have disclosed the guard door in 1994 and whether its 1996 information was an adequate warning were jury questions; “adequate warnings as to the proper or safe use of a product are part of the total design package of the product.” Summary judgment on strict liability was affirmed, and summary judgment on the negligence and misrepresentation claims was reversed.

6. Stubbs v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (2026)

Stubbs v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., No. A26A0824, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 30, 2026

On July 24, 2020, Victoria Stubbs’s walk-behind Toro lawnmower, bought at Home Depot and fitted with a Kohler engine, clogged with grass and stalled. She laid it on its side and reached in by hand to remove grass between the blade and the sidewall. Although the mower was off, she heard a popping sound, and the blade rotated a half to a full turn and severed the tips of two of her fingers. The mower’s display model, box and point-of-sale placard said “no oil change needed”; the family’s expert, an automobile mechanic, said that the missed oil changes led to carbon deposits and an unintended ignition. The family sued Toro and Kohler on product liability theories and Home Depot for breach of the implied warranty of merchantability, fraud, negligent misrepresentation and violations of the Fair Business Practices Act.

Both rulings against the family were affirmed. The trial court acted within its discretion in excluding the expert, who had no professional experience with lawnmowers or their engines. Home Depot had not been sued as a manufacturer, and the implied warranty of merchantability protects against defects that exist at the time of sale; it does not “provide a warranty of continuing serviceability,” and two years of use without incident “inherently negates” a claim that the mower was unmerchantable when bought. The misrepresentation claim failed for lack of evidence that the missed oil changes caused the incident, and the fraud and Fair Business Practices Act claims failed because the family could not show that Home Depot intended to induce the purchase. The product liability claims against Toro and Kohler were still pending in the trial court.

Design Defects

In Banks v. ICI Americas (No. 9) in 1994, the Supreme Court of Georgia adopted a risk-utility test for design defects, one that weighs “the risks inherent in a product design against the utility of the product so designed,” and four years later it held that an obvious danger is one factor in that balance rather than a bar (No. 10). The first two decisions below came before Banks; the others apply it. They cover a product the buyer had rebuilt, injuries made worse by a vehicle’s design, alternative designs and obvious dangers, misuse the maker could not foresee, missing proof of a defect, and the place of warnings in weighing a design.

7. Talley v. City Tank Corp. (1981)

Talley v. City Tank Corp., 158 Ga. App. 130, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 9, 1981

Jim Talley, a sanitation worker for the City of LaGrange, was working on a garbage truck on May 10, 1975, when a trash container that had been hoisted to dump its contents came loose from the back of the truck, swung sideways on the hoisting cable, and struck and fell on him. He died about three hours later. City Tank Corporation had manufactured the truck, but the city’s own maintenance staff had removed nearly all of the original pivot plates and replaced them with a different J-shaped bracket design so the truck could lift the city’s containers, which the city had also modified. Only the cable mechanism remained as originally designed.

The manufacturer and the company that assembled and sold the truck were entitled to summary judgment. When a product’s design “has been independently altered, eliminated and replaced by a third party after the sale,” injuries that follow “cannot be traced to or be the proximate result of the manufacturer’s original design which did not exist at the time of injury,” the Court of Appeals held. In some cases, whether a design was only slightly modified, and whether the original design or the modification caused the injury, may be for a jury, but not where the original design was “totally eliminated and replaced.” There was also “no duty to warn that a redesign and replacement of the integral and ultimately injurious component of a product will destroy the original design.” The decision applied the predecessor of § 51-1-11, and in 2026 the Court of Appeals cited it in Yamaha v. Hall (No. 14).

8. Polston v. Boomershine Pontiac-GMC Truck, Inc. (1992)

Polston v. Boomershine Pontiac-GMC Truck, Inc., 262 Ga. 616, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided December 3, 1992

After a collision between her car and another, Polston sued the other driver, several dealers and General Motors, which made her car, claiming that design defects made her injuries worse than the collision alone would have. A federal trial court directed a verdict for General Motors, and the federal court of appeals asked the Supreme Court of Georgia who bears the burden of dividing the damages between the other driver and the manufacturer in such a “crashworthiness or enhanced injury” case.

The plaintiff must first prove “that a design defect was a substantial factor in producing damages over and above those which were probably caused as a result of the original impact or collision,” the Court answered, 4 to 3. To the extent the injuries cannot be divided, the defendants are treated as joint tortfeasors, and once the plaintiff carries that burden, a defendant that wishes to limit its liability must “demonstrate a rational basis for apportioning the liability for the injuries.” The decision predates the 2005 amendment of Georgia’s apportionment statute, OCGA § 51-12-33, and how that amendment bears on this allocation is not addressed here.

9. Banks v. ICI Americas, Inc. (1994)

Banks v. ICI Americas, Inc., 264 Ga. 732, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided December 5, 1994

According to the claim, nine-year-old Mario Strum died after swallowing a rat poison called Talon-G, which he found in an unmarked container in a cabinet at a local boys’ club serviced by a pest control company. His parents and his estate sued the club, the pest control company and the maker, ICI Americas, alleging that the product was defectively designed and inadequately labeled. The club and the pest control company settled during trial, and the jury returned a verdict against ICI that included $1 million in punitive damages. The Court of Appeals reversed.

Reversing in turn, the Supreme Court adopted the risk-utility test: “the better approach is to evaluate design defectiveness under a test balancing the risks inherent in a product design against the utility of the product so designed.” A jury “may consider evidence establishing that at the time the product was manufactured, an alternative design would have made the product safer than the original design and was a marketable reality and technologically feasible,” and a manufacturer’s compliance with industry practice, the state of the art or federal regulations “does not eliminate conclusively its liability.” At the same time, “a manufacturer is not an insurer that its product is, from a design viewpoint, incapable of producing injury.” The family was entitled to a new trial on the design claim unless the Court of Appeals’ resolution of other issues precluded one, and the Court affirmed the ruling that federal pesticide law preempted the labeling claim. Three justices dissented in part.

10. Ogletree v. Navistar International Transportation Corp. (1998)

Ogletree v. Navistar International Transportation Corp., 269 Ga. 443, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided May 18, 1998

The owner of a fertilizer spreader truck backed it over the husband of Mrs. Jackie Ogletree, killing him. She sued Navistar, whose predecessor made the truck’s cab and chassis, claiming that it should have installed an audible back-up alarm. The jury found for her but awarded only funeral and medical expenses; the trial court then entered judgment for Navistar notwithstanding the verdict, and the Court of Appeals affirmed under the “open and obvious danger” rule, under which the obvious absence of a safety device is not an actionable design defect.

That rule did not survive Banks (No. 9). “We hold that the ‘open and obvious danger’ rule is not controlling in a case where, as here, it is alleged that a product has a design defect,” the Court wrote; the obviousness of a danger “is logically only one of many factors which affect the product’s risk.” It left open whether the rule still applies to failure-to-warn claims. On remand the Court of Appeals again ruled for Navistar, and in 1999 the Supreme Court reversed again, 5 to 2, holding that because there was some evidence that the risk of the cab and chassis without the alarm outweighed its utility, the design question could not be decided as a matter of law.

11. Bodymasters Sports Industries, Inc. v. Wimberley (1998)

Bodymasters Sports Industries, Inc. v. Wimberley, 232 Ga. App. 170, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided April 13, 1998

Candice Wimberley, whose left knee had been weakened by a childhood injury and about 29 surgeries, was using an inverted leg press at her health club on March 30, 1996. She had loaded 200 pounds and removed the pin that otherwise stopped the foot plate about 33 inches from the seat, as the quadriceps exercise required, when her feet slipped down the plate; the weight forced her legs toward her chest, and her kneecap fractured. She knew the machine had no device to stop the weight in that mode. She also knew wet shoes could slip and had wiped her soles with a towel before starting.

Her design claim could go to a jury. After Banks, the Court of Appeals held, an open and obvious danger “is but one factor to be considered in determining whether a product is defective,” evidence of an alternative design is a factor but not a prerequisite, and whether she assumed the risk depended on whether she actually appreciated the specific danger, which the record did not conclusively establish. Her warning claim failed: because she already knew that wet shoes could slip, the lack of a sign warning of that danger “could not have been the proximate cause of her injury.” A warranty claim failed for lack of privity. The Supreme Court reached the same conclusion on obvious dangers in Ogletree (No. 10) five weeks later.

12. Woods v. A.R.E. Accessories, LLC (2018)

Woods v. A.R.E. Accessories, LLC, No. A18A0292, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided May 24, 2018

Craig Woods, who worked for Fayette County Fire and Emergency Services, raised the rear door of a truck cap mounted over the bed of a department pickup, and 10 to 15 seconds later the door fell and struck his head. The cap had been used daily for about a year without problems. Nine days before the accident, another company had installed a custom-made sliding bed extender under the cap; when it was rolled out with the door raised, it struck one of the two gas struts holding the door and knocked its joint loose, and the remaining strut could not hold the door’s full weight. His expert said the maker, A.R.E. Accessories, should have added a latch or struts strong enough to hold the door alone, but admitted he had never seen those features on any manufacturer’s truck cap door.

The misuse ended the case. “[A] product manufacturer has no duty to design or warn against harm caused by an unforeseeable misuse of its product, and a product that causes harm as a result of unforeseeable misuse is not defective,” the Court of Appeals held, while reasonably foreseeable misuse remains a factor in the risk-utility analysis. Nothing in the record showed that A.R.E. had reason to foresee the installation of a custom extender that would strike the struts, and whether the misuse was foreseeable was not a subject for expert opinion. The sole cause of the harm was the unforeseeable misuse, and summary judgment for A.R.E. was affirmed.

13. Sheffield v. Conair Corporation (2018)

Sheffield v. Conair Corporation, No. A18A1032, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 30, 2018

Mary Sheffield fell asleep on the evening of September 30, 2013, while using a Conair heating pad for neck pain. An hour or an hour and a half later, her mother, SuVanne Fuller, noticed a strange odor and found that the pad had burned into the sheets and mattress; by the time Sheffield got out of bed, the mattress and curtains were in flames, and they lost the rented home, its contents and several pets. The fire chief placed the fire’s origin in the area of the pad but expressly said he could not say whether the pad failed or was defective.

There was nothing to weigh under the risk-utility test. The family offered no evidence of the pad’s operating temperature, the heat needed to ignite bedding, the likelihood or avoidability of the danger, or the cost and effectiveness of a safety feature, and no expert testimony on defect. The evidence allowed only an inference that the pad caused the fire, and “that inference does not extend to the cause being the result of a design defect.” With no defect shown, the warning claim failed as well. Documents describing other consumers’ complaints did not help, because no foundation was laid for them and the incidents were not shown to be “substantially similar.” Summary judgment for Conair was affirmed.

14. Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corporation of America v. Hall (2026)

Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corporation of America v. Hall, No. A26A0228, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 22, 2026

Three-year-old Suzanne Hall was riding in a golf cart driven by her father, Brooks Hall, on a neighborhood street when the car ahead of them stopped. He braked, the rear wheels locked, and the cart spun and rolled onto its side, trapping her between the road and the cart. Yamaha had made the cart, which was leased to a golf course and later sold; a later owner added a rear-facing seat, a lift kit, lights and larger tires and sold it to Brooks Hall without warning labels or an operator’s manual. Her mother claimed that the cart was defectively designed because only its rear wheels had brakes, and the jury awarded $7 million. The trial court had excluded the wording of Yamaha’s warnings, which told drivers to go slowly straight up and down slopes.

That exclusion required reversal. One of the risk-utility factors listed in Banks is “the avoidability of the danger, i.e., the user’s knowledge of the product, publicity surrounding the danger, or the efficacy of warnings,” so “[t]he contents of Yamaha’s warnings were relevant to the jurors’ analysis,” the Court of Appeals held, even if they could not be used on the failure-to-warn claim because the father never read them; “evidence inadmissible for one purpose may be relevant and admissible for another purpose.” The error was not harmless, and the judgment was reversed.

Warnings

A manufacturer’s duty to warn, as the Supreme Court of Georgia put it in 1994, “arises whenever the manufacturer knows or reasonably should know of the danger arising from the use of its product.” The five decisions below address that duty and the statute of repose, the difference between what a warning says and how it is communicated, the rule that the maker of a prescription drug or device ordinarily warns the physician rather than the patient, and the limits on whom a manufacturer must warn.

15. Chrysler Corp. v. Batten (1994)

Chrysler Corp. v. Batten, 264 Ga. 723, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided December 5, 1994

Patricia Batten was injured in October 1988 in a two-car collision while driving a Chrysler LeBaron bought in May 1978. She and her husband sued in 1990, claiming that the seat belt mechanism was defectively designed and that Chrysler negligently failed to warn of the danger. The trial court held all of the claims against Chrysler barred by the ten-year statute of repose, and the Court of Appeals reversed as to the claims sounding in negligence.

Chrysler was entitled to summary judgment on the claims based on the 1978 sale, because the evidence, which concerned a 1975 seat belt mechanism that Chrysler had redesigned, was “insufficient as a matter of law to support a finding that Chrysler’s conduct manifested a ‘willful, reckless, or wanton disregard for life or property.'” The failure-to-warn claim was different. The final sentence of § 51-1-11 (c) provides that “[n]othing contained in this subsection shall relieve a manufacturer from the duty to warn of a danger arising from use of a product once that danger becomes known to the manufacturer,” and with that language “the legislature carefully excluded failure-to-warn causes of action from the statute of repose.” That claim could proceed, though the Court expressed no opinion on whether the evidence would support it. Two justices dissented.

16. Wilson Foods Corp. v. Turner (1995)

Wilson Foods Corp. v. Turner, 218 Ga. App. 74, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 3, 1995

In 1986 Charles Turner cooked with Bake-Rite shortening and poured the hot leftover shortening back into its container, not knowing that the container was made of a composite material rather than metal. According to the claim, as he carried it to the trash the container dissolved, and hot grease splashed onto his two-year-old son, who was seriously burned and permanently scarred. The family claimed that the container was designed to look like a metal can and that its plastic lid lacked a warning against pouring hot oil into it. Turner had not read any of the warnings on the container, and the jury found for the family.

Turner’s failure to read the warnings mattered for one theory and not the other. A plaintiff who did not read a warning cannot recover on a claim that its content was inadequate, but “[f]ailure to read a warning does not bar recovery when the plaintiff is challenging the adequacy of the efforts of the manufacturer or seller to communicate the dangers of the product to the buyer or user,” such as where and how a warning is placed. Because the complaint and the jury instructions also reached the content of the warning, the manufacturer was entitled to a partial directed verdict on that theory, and the error was not harmless. The judgment was reversed.

17. Presto v. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corp. (1997)

Presto v. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corp., 226 Ga. App. 547, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided May 13, 1997

Greg Presto had been treated for mental illness with Clozaril, an antipsychotic drug prescribed by his doctor. In August 1991, at his and his mother’s request, the doctor agreed to take him off the drug, according to the family’s complaint, and in September 1991 he died by suicide. His parents alleged that no one told him or them of a warning in the drug’s packaging, which recommended reducing the dosage gradually over one or two weeks and careful observation after an abrupt stop, and they sued the manufacturer, Sandoz, for failing to warn him.

Sandoz’s duty ran to the prescribing physician, not the patient, and summary judgment for Sandoz was affirmed: “Ordinarily, in the case of prescription drugs, a warning as to possible danger in its use to the prescribing physician is sufficient.” The family did not claim that the warning given to the doctor, who had signed a statement that he was familiar with the package labeling, was inadequate. A general guide that Sandoz published for patients and families did not create a duty to warn the patient directly, because it did not purport to cover every danger and told readers to ask the doctor, nurse or pharmacist about other questions.

18. McCombs v. Synthes (U.S.A.) (2003)

McCombs v. Synthes (U.S.A.), 277 Ga. 252, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided September 15, 2003

Linda McCombs had spinal surgery in which a plate was installed to stabilize her spine, and the plate later fractured. The manufacturer, Synthes Spine, won summary judgment on her failure-to-warn claim under the learned intermediary doctrine, arguing that its warning to her doctor was sufficient and that it had no duty to warn her. The Court of Appeals declined to consider her argument that the warning to the doctor was inadequate, because she had not specifically made it in the trial court.

Adequacy was part of what the trial court had decided, the Supreme Court held. Under the doctrine, the maker of a prescription drug or medical device “does not have a duty to warn the patient of the dangers involved with the product, but instead has a duty to warn the patient’s doctor, who acts as a learned intermediary between the patient and the manufacturer,” and that warning must itself be adequate. To grant summary judgment on that basis, the trial court “had to conclude that the warning given by Synthes Spine to McCombs’s physician was adequate or reasonable as a matter of law,” so McCombs could challenge the adequacy of the warning on appeal. The case was returned to the Court of Appeals to consider her arguments.

19. CertainTeed Corp. v. Fletcher (2016)

CertainTeed Corp. v. Fletcher, 300 Ga. 327, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided November 30, 2016

Marcella Fletcher was diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma, which she attributed to years of laundering her father’s work clothing, covered with dust from the asbestos-containing water pipes made by CertainTeed that he worked with. She sued CertainTeed for negligent design and negligent failure to warn. The trial court granted summary judgment before discovery was complete, and the Court of Appeals reversed on both claims.

The design claim could go forward. The risk-utility test from Banks, not the rule limiting an employer’s duty to people outside the workplace, governed a manufacturer’s design, and CertainTeed had not shown “plainly and indisputably an absence of any evidence that a product as designed is defective.” But the Court held that “CertainTeed owed no duty to warn Fletcher regarding the dangers of the asbestos dust.” A warning meant to protect people in her position would not have reached them in any systematic way and would have depended on each worker’s choices, and “the mechanism and scope of such warnings would be endless.” One justice concurred specially and one concurred in the judgment only.

Proving a Defect, and Punitive Damages

The five decisions below cover circumstantial proof of a manufacturing defect, the evidence that supported a punitive award against a truck maker, the test for admitting evidence of other incidents, the causation standard where several companies’ products may have contributed to a disease, and the use of an executive’s pay to show a witness’s bias. The first applied the predecessor of § 51-1-11.

20. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Hall (1979)

Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Hall, 152 Ga. App. 560, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 17, 1979

On December 3, 1975, Marvin and Pearl Irene Hall bought a 1975 Ford tri-axle dump truck with Firestone 12-ply tires for a new business. After a few trips hauling crushed rock from Columbus to Bainbridge, a front tire blew out; according to Marvin Hall, the tire he returned for adjustment was in two pieces, “split right down the middle all the way around,” and the rim was blown away and lost. Firestone declined to adjust the claim. At trial its expert testified that the tire he examined, an eight-ply tire rated as 12-ply, had no manufacturing defect, but Hall testified that it was not the tire that blew out. The jury found for the Halls.

A manufacturing defect may be proved by circumstances, the Court of Appeals held in affirming. Evidence that the tires were new and properly inflated, that there was no known road hazard, and that “there was no other reasonable explanation for the blowout other than a defect in the tire” allowed the jury to infer that the defect existed when the tire left Firestone’s hands. Given the chain of possession and the difference in plies, the trial court properly placed on Firestone the burden of proving that the tire its expert examined was the one on the truck. The Supreme Court of Georgia agreed to review the case but in 1980 dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, over two dissents, leaving this decision in place.

21. Mack Trucks, Inc. v. Conkle (1993)

Mack Trucks, Inc. v. Conkle, 263 Ga. 539, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided November 22, 1993

Daniel Conkle was driving a tractor-trailer in October 1988 when its right frame rail broke and the truck overturned. The jury found Mack Trucks liable for “negligent failure to recall or warn,” though not in strict liability, found Conkle 15 percent responsible, and awarded $184,082 in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages against Mack. The trial court declared unconstitutional the statute directing that 75 percent of punitive damages in a product liability case, less costs and attorney fees, be paid to the state.

The award and the state’s share both stood. A negligence claim against a manufacturer is still a product liability action, so the $250,000 limit on punitive damages in many other tort cases did not apply, and the state’s 75 percent share is constitutional. Clear and convincing evidence supported the award. The record showed that for four years Mack’s engineering division had reported that the frame rail on that model was inadequate, that in 1984 and again in 1987 the marketing division vetoed an engineering proposal to reinforce the frames on newly built trucks at a cost of $103, and that purchasers were not notified, evidence showing a “conscious indifference to consequences.” Complaints of frame cracks in other Mack trucks were properly admitted because they were substantially similar and relevant “to the issues of notice and punitive damages.” One justice dissented from the ruling on the state’s share. That provision, OCGA § 51-12-5.1 (e) (2), appears in the text published by FindLaw as current in March 2024.

22. Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. v. Crosby (2001)

Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. v. Crosby, 273 Ga. 454, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided February 16, 2001

In June 1991 the left rear tire of Bobby Crosby’s Bronco II blew out and the vehicle flipped over, killing him and seriously injuring his wife, Jan, and daughter, Kelly. Jan Crosby claimed that the tire’s radial belts separated because of a manufacturing defect; Cooper Tire said the tire had been driven more than 30,000 miles and that the blowout was caused by an impact with a road hazard. The trial court excluded Cooper’s “adjustment statistics,” the consumer claims it had honored, for all tires made at the same plant over nine years. The jury found for Cooper, and the Court of Appeals reversed on another ground while ruling that the statistics should have been admitted.

The statistics were properly kept out. Under “the ‘rule of substantial similarity,'” such evidence is inadmissible unless its proponent first shows “a ‘substantial similarity’ between the other transactions, occurrences, or claims and the claim at issue in the litigation,” and “[t]he showing of substantial similarity must include a showing of similarity as to causation.” Crosby had not shown that the adjusted tires shared the design and manufacturing process of her husband’s tire, a common defect or a common cause, and without those showings the rule could not be satisfied. Two justices dissented. The retrial ordered on the other ground was not before the Court.

23. John Crane, Inc. v. Jones (2004)

John Crane, Inc. v. Jones, 278 Ga. 747, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided November 8, 2004

In 1996 Robert H. Jones sued eight companies, claiming that workplace exposure to asbestos dust from their products caused his mesothelioma. After he died in 1997, his wife, Laila A. Jones, continued the suit and added wrongful death and loss of consortium claims. Only John Crane, Inc. remained at trial, and the jury returned a $1,975,000 verdict against it. John Crane argued that the jury should have been told that its products had to be a “substantial” contributing factor.

Georgia law imposes no such requirement, the Supreme Court held. The jury was properly instructed that each defendant’s conduct had to be “a contributing factor” in bringing about the damages, and that instruction would not have led the jury to award damages for a de minimis exposure. The “substantial factor” language in Polston (No. 8) applied to enhanced injuries in crashworthiness cases. In Scapa Dryer Fabrics v. Knight (2016), a case against the operator of a textile plant rather than a product maker, the Court explained that a contribution need not be substantial but must be “meaningful,” because “a de minimis contribution to an injury is not sufficient to establish legal causation under Georgia law.”

24. Chrysler Group, LLC v. Walden (2018)

Chrysler Group, LLC v. Walden, 303 Ga. 358, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided March 15, 2018

On March 6, 2012, a pickup traveling more than 50 miles per hour rear-ended a 1999 Jeep in which four-year-old Remington Walden was riding in the back seat. The impact ruptured the Jeep’s gas tank, mounted behind the rear axle, and Remington burned to death trying to escape. To overcome the ten-year statute of repose in his parents’ suit against Chrysler, the family had to show willful, reckless or wanton conduct. Viewed in support of the verdict, the evidence showed that Chrysler had long known the rear placement was dangerous, that the placement ran against industry trends, and that the model was left out of a recommended federal recall after Chrysler’s chief executive met with federal officials; Chrysler showed that the vehicle met federal safety standards and that the federal investigation found no unreasonable risk. The jury found that Chrysler acted with “a reckless or wanton disregard for human life” and failed to warn, and the trial court reduced the $150 million verdict to $40 million. At trial the family’s lawyers had brought out that the executive’s pay exceeded $68 million and referred to it in closing argument.

Pay evidence of this kind is neither always nor never admissible to show a witness’s bias; “such evidence is subject to OCGA § 24-4-403 (‘Rule 403’) analysis weighing the evidence’s unfair prejudice against its probative value.” Because Chrysler had not objected on that ground, the Court reviewed only for plain error and found none, since the executive’s conduct and credibility were central to the case. “That is not to say that we would make the same decision de novo, or even necessarily under the ordinary ‘abuse of discretion’ standard of review,” the Court added, and it affirmed. Five justices concurred specially or in the judgment only on that part of the opinion.

The Ten-Year Statute of Repose

As the Supreme Court of Georgia quoted it in 2011, § 51-1-11 (b) (2) provides: “No action shall be commenced pursuant to this subsection with respect to an injury after ten years from the date of the first sale for use or consumption of the personal property causing or otherwise bringing about the injury.” Subsection (c) extends that limit to negligence claims against manufacturers, “except an action seeking to recover from a manufacturer for injuries or damages arising out of the negligence of such manufacturer in manufacturing products which cause a disease or birth defect, or arising out of conduct which manifests a willful, reckless, or wanton disregard for life or property.” The period runs from the sale, whether or not an injury has yet occurred, and failure-to-warn claims fall outside it (No. 15). The six decisions below address the statute’s constitutionality, when the period starts, how it applies to asbestos claims and to repeated purchases, and what “reckless” means; one also addresses federal preemption.

25. Love v. Whirlpool Corp. (1994)

Love v. Whirlpool Corp., 264 Ga. 701, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided November 7, 1994

A fire at the Love home on January 21, 1990, injured Terry Love and killed his wife, Prima, the couple’s two sons and Prima’s son from an earlier marriage. Love alleged that the fire was caused by a defective Whirlpool clothes dryer, by its ITT power cord, or by both; the dryer and cord had been bought used on July 29, 1981, the date the parties agreed to treat as the first sale. He filed suits in 1991, voluntarily dismissed them, and refiled under the renewal statute on December 17, 1992, more than ten years after that date.

The statute of repose survived challenges under equal protection, due process, access to the courts and the single-subject rule. Having upheld a five-year statute of repose for medical malpractice actions, the Court could not “regard a ten-year limitation for products liability actions, adopted for the same purposes, as either arbitrary or unreasonable,” and the disease and birth defect exceptions reflect injuries “the latent effects of which may not be manifest for many years.” Having dismissed his earlier suits, Love could not use the renewal statute: § 51-1-11 “barred absolutely, but not unconstitutionally, these renewal actions.” Treating fire injuries and smoke inhalation deaths as a “disease,” the Court added, “would be to expand the term ‘disease’ virtually to the point of meaninglessness.”

26. Parks v. Hyundai Motor America, Inc. (2008)

Parks v. Hyundai Motor America, Inc., 294 Ga. App. 112, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 20, 2008

Five-year-old Cedric J. Parks Jr. was killed while riding in the center rear seat of a 1989 Hyundai Excel, wearing its lap-only seat belt, when another car struck the Excel head-on. His parents sued Hyundai on December 30, 1999, claiming that the rear seat belt system was defective. The car had been assembled on October 19, 1988, and bought new by its first retail owner on January 14, 1989.

Both grounds for summary judgment held. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 then allowed the manufacturer to choose a lap-only belt or a lap and shoulder belt for that seat, so claims that Hyundai should have installed a different system were impliedly preempted, and the risk-utility analysis of Banks “is not an exception to the Supremacy Clause.” The remaining claim, attacking the specific design of the lap belt, was barred by the statute of repose, which began with the first retail sale; the complaints and accidents the family offered to show reckless or wanton conduct lacked the required showing of substantial similarity. The trial court had declined to apply the statute of repose to a negligent failure-to-warn claim.

27. Campbell v. Altec Industries, Inc. (2011)

Campbell v. Altec Industries, Inc., 288 Ga. 535, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided February 7, 2011

Georgia Power employee Ronald J. Campbell Jr. was operating a bucket truck on June 30, 2006, when the lower boom lift cylinder failed, sending the booms and bucket to the ground. Altec Industries built the truck and sold it to Georgia Power; Texas Hydraulics made the cylinder. The Campbells sued on February 4, 2008, and a federal court held the product liability claim barred because the ten-year period began on January 14, 1998, when Altec placed the cylinder on a test chassis and operated it.

The period starts later, the Court answered: the statute of repose “begins to run when a finished product is sold as new to the intended consumer who is to receive the product, in this case, Georgia Power Company,” and suit against the maker of any component had to be filed within ten years of that sale. The Court overruled a 2006 Court of Appeals decision that had started the period when a car was assembled and became operable. The completed truck was delivered to Georgia Power on or after April 13, 1998, less than ten years before the suit.

28. PTI Royston, LLC v. Eubanks (2021)

PTI Royston, LLC v. Eubanks, 360 Ga. App. 263, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 28, 2021

According to the complaint, Shirley Eubanks used Johnson & Johnson baby powder containing talc every day from 1963 until 2016, when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer that she attributed to asbestos in the talc. In 2019 she and her husband sued several companies, including PTI Royston, which had made talc for Johnson & Johnson since 2005. PTI moved to dismiss the strict liability claims under the ten-year statute of repose, and the trial court denied the motion, reading a provision of Georgia’s Asbestos Claims and Silica Claims Act as displacing it.

The asbestos statute’s phrase “notwithstanding any other provision of law” refers to the statute of limitation, not the statute of repose, the Court of Appeals held, so the ten-year bar applies to strict liability claims under that act. The negligence claims were unaffected: “Nothing in OCGA § 51-1-11 (b) imposes a statute of repose on their claims for negligence,” the court wrote, pointing to § 51-1-11 (c) and its exception for negligence claims involving disease. The court reversed and sent the case back for the trial court to decide whether PTI’s alleged fraud estopped it from relying on the statute of repose. In 2025 the Supreme Court cited the case as an example of a claim of injury from long use of a product (No. 30).

29. Ford Motor Company v. Cosper (2023)

Ford Motor Company v. Cosper, 317 Ga. 356, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided September 19, 2023

On December 25, 2015, a Ford Explorer rolled over in Haralson County, and the passenger-side roof intruded into the occupant compartment. The front-seat passenger, Ronnie Ammerson, suffered cervical spine fractures and spinal cord trauma and, after months of rehabilitation, died of pneumonia resulting from those injuries. In the suit brought by his child and his estate, a federal district court asked the Supreme Court of Georgia whether “reckless” conduct is a separate exception to the statute of repose and, if so, what it means.

The answer to the first question was yes: “reckless disregard for life or property is a standalone exception to OCGA § 51-1-11 (b) (2)’s ten-year statute of repose.” For the second, the Court drew on the first Restatement of Torts and held that conduct is reckless if the actor “intentionally does an act or fails to do an act which it is his duty to the other to do, knowing or having reason to know of facts which would lead a reasonable person to realize that the actor’s conduct not only creates an unreasonable risk of harm to another’s life or property but also involves a high degree of probability that substantial harm will result to the other’s life or property.” A 2016 Court of Appeals definition was disapproved to the extent it conflicted.

30. Burroughs v. Strength of Nature Global, LLC (2025)

Burroughs v. Strength of Nature Global, LLC, Nos. S24G1387 and S24G1388, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided October 15, 2025

According to her complaint, Kiara Burroughs bought and used chemical hair relaxers every six to eight weeks from 1995 to 2014, apart from a break of about a year, including Strength of Nature products throughout that period and L’Oreal products from 2003 to 2014. She was diagnosed with uterine fibroids in March 2018 and sued in October 2022, alleging that phthalates and other endocrine-disruptive chemicals in the products caused them. The Court of Appeals held her strict liability claims barred because the ten-year period began with her first purchase from each manufacturer.

The statute applies unit by unit, the Supreme Court held unanimously: “OCGA § 51-1-11(b)(2) creates a ten-year statute of repose that begins to run on each sale of a unit as new to an intended end user.” A claim is not barred “merely because a plaintiff alleges that one or more of the units in question were sold to an intended end user more than ten years before she brought the action,” although the plaintiff must still prove that units sold within the ten years caused the injury. The Court left open whether units sold outside the period could defeat the claim if the injury would not have occurred without them, observing that “[a] legislative solution may well be better than any answer a court could come up with given the current statute.” Her negligence, failure-to-warn and fraud claims were already proceeding.

How the Decisions Were Chosen and Checked

All 30 decisions are from the Supreme Court of Georgia or the Court of Appeals of Georgia; federal court decisions applying Georgia law were not included, although four entries are the Supreme Court’s answers to questions certified by federal courts. Every Court of Appeals decision used here was joined in full by the other two judges on its panel, so none is physical precedent. Each summary was written from the opinion text, and facts are given as the court described them; where a case was decided on the pleadings, the facts are allegations, and where it was decided on summary judgment or after a verdict, they are the evidence as the court viewed it. Citations use the Georgia Reports or Georgia Appeals Reports where that citation appeared in the reporter text or in a published opinion; otherwise the docket number and decision date are given. The summaries note where a decision on this page limited, overruled or disapproved another decision, and where a decision read for this page did so later; a complete review of each decision’s later history was not performed. Research for this page was completed in September 2026.

Legislation Cited

Senate Bill 144 (2025), as passed, Georgia General Assembly

Summary of General Statutes Enacted at the 2nd Session of the 157th General Assembly (2024), Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel

Summary of General Statutes Enacted at the 1st Session of the 158th General Assembly (2025), Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel

Summary of General Statutes Enacted at the 2nd Session of the 158th General Assembly (2026), Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel

About This Page

This page describes published decisions of Georgia’s appellate courts for general information. It is not legal advice and does not evaluate any particular product, injury or claim. How a product liability case turns out depends on its own facts, on the version of the statutes that governs it and on later decisions, and some of the rules described here may since have been limited or changed.