§ Lord Kennetasked Her Majesty's Government:
To whom in their view a person should turn for compensation after suffering damage or injury from using a product which has been marketed for profit and where a "state of the art" defence is allowed to the seller.
999WA
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth)The noble Lord is presumably referring to the defence under Article 7(e) of EEC Directive 85/374 concerning liability for defective products. The directive does not affect other national remedies so existing rights of action will still be available, including the contractual rights of a buyer against the seller. There may well be some circumstances, however, which would be restricted to the narrowly defined circumstances of damage caused by a defective product whose defect could not have been discovered given the state of scientific and technical knowledge at the time it was put into circulation, where a person injured by a product may have no legal right of recourse if the Article 7(e) defence is retained. We believe that such circumstances will be very rare in practice.