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Fixing Failure To Warn, Aaron D. Twerski, James A. Henderson Jr.

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Design-defect and failure-to-warn cases share the same structural elements. Just as the defendant cannot defend a case premised on defective design without knowing the specifics of how the plaintiff would redesign the product to make it safer, so with regard to defective warnings the plaintiff cannot challenge the reasonableness of the defendant's marketing or whether better warnings would have saved the plaintiff from injury without knowing the specifics of the proposed warnings. No court would accept as adequate a statement by the plaintiff that she has a general idea for a reasonable alternative design (RAD), and no court should accept …