Catherine Sharkey, who is Crystal Eastman Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, has written a thought-provoking, and in light of the recent Supreme Court of Ohio decision in Stiner v. Amazon.com, Inc., Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-4632, timely law review article entitled “Holding Amazon Liable as a Seller of Defective Goods: A Convergence of Cultural and Economic Perspectives.” The article is forthcoming in the Northwestern University Law Review Online and the link to the article on SSRN (Social Science Research Network) is here. I met Professor Sharkey when she gave a guest lecture at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and also had the pleasure of visiting her torts class on a visit to New York.

Here is the abstract of Professor Sharkey’s article: 

Amazon’s e-commerce business, which offers a platform for third-party vendors, defies conventional categorization for products liability purposes. Professor Marshall Shapo’s [Professor Bettman’s note: Shapo is Frederic P. Vose Professor of Law Emeritus at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and a nationally recognized expert on torts and products liability law] conception of ‘tort law as a cultural mirror’ sheds light on how products liability law has evolved so as to hold Amazon liable even as the seismic shift away from brick-and-mortar physical stores to the virtual marketplace has transformed the reasonable expectations of consumers. Holding Amazon liable is likewise supported by the economic perspective embodied in the ‘cheapest cost avoider’ analysis; namely, that Amazon is best situated to take actions to minimize risks and prevent accidents from defective products. This convergence of cultural and economic perspectives and the emergence of a culturally specific norm of efficiency-as-responsibility in the context of the virtual marketplace, signals tort law’s ever moving march forward into the modern era.”

Sharkey’s article includes a couple of footnote references to the Supreme Court of Ohio’s recent decision in Stiner, including the quote from Justice Donnelly’s concurrence in judgment that “the divide between the pre-internet age and the current age is so profound that laws like this Act might as well have been written in the stone age.”

With my oft-admitted notorious plaintiff’s heart, I fully concur with Professor Sharkey’s analysis and conclusions.