(Second Chamber for Civil Matters of the Arnsberg Regional Court, Germany) The Plaintiff claimed damages and compensation for pain due to harm to his health from smoking cigarettes manufactured by the Defendant. He also sought information about the addition of addiction-promoting substances and a finding with regard to consequential damages. He cited the Defendant’s failure to provide warnings, product manipulation and a fundamental flaw in the cigarette product.
Held: There was no liability from the point of view of producer liability due to a fault in construction or instruction: ‘There is no construction fault in cigarettes. Cigarettes are not a faulty product, in spite of the health risks arising from their consumption. The dangers arising from this have indisputably been known to consumers and the Plaintiff for a long time and were consciously accepted. Everyone knows that in the long term smoking can lead to serious, potentially even fatal harm to health, that it can lead to addiction which makes it hard to stop smoking. Consumers cannot justifiably expect that cigarettes are constructed in such a way that they do not give rise to these dangers. For instance, in the jurisdiction which this chamber follows it has long been recognised that the producer does not have to avert dangers which are typically linked with the use of a product and known to the users or recognised and accepted by them […]. The decisive aspect therefore is that smokers are responsible for their own acts. They must themselves bear the consequences of their independent behaviour and cannot pass them on to the cigarette manufacturers.’ and ‘The Defendant has also not committed a so-called instruction fault by neglecting warnings on his products. The Plaintiff did not concretely assert that the Defendant had not met the legal duty of information and this is not evident. There are no further duties of information for the Defendant. . . The manufacturer of a product must only indicate the most important features. He must not meet any special duties of information if certain product risks are generally known. . . However, all risks linked with the consumption of cigarettes have been known to the consumers for a long time. This also includes the possible addictive effect of cigarette consumption. This does not concern special knowledge – such as how health is harmed by cigarette consumption. Therefore the judiciary has basically unanimously rejected a further duty of information […]. Thus there does not have to be separate information about an allegedly addiction-increasing effect of additives. Because the effect of these substances, i.e. in lay terms that smoking is addictive – as always – is not news to the consumer.’
2 O 294/02
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – McTear v Imperial Tobacco Ltd OHCS 31-May-2005
The pursuer sought damages after her husband’s death from lung cancer. She said that the defenders were negligent in having continued to sell him cigarettes knowing that they would cause this.
Held: The action failed. The plaintiff had not . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 10 August 2021; Ref: scu.226701