## Facts

- Mitchell and Donna Floyd sued Bic Corporation as parents and next friends of their minor child, Mindy Floyd, seeking damages for burn injuries allegedly involving a Bic adjustable butane cigarette lighter.
- Plaintiffs alleged the lighter was negligently designed and manufactured and was defective and unmerchantable for its intended use.
- In discovery, plaintiffs identified expert testimony concerning children’s attraction to fire and lighters and proposed child-safety measures for adjustable butane lighters.
- Bic moved for partial summary judgment limited to the design-defect theory that the lighter was defective because it lacked child-proof (child-resistant) features.
- The motion did not address any separate claim that a manufacturing defect (such as fuel leakage) caused the injury.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Georgia products-liability law, a manufacturer of an adult-intended butane cigarette lighter has a legal duty to design the lighter to be child-proof to prevent foreseeable misuse by children.
2. Whether the open and obvious nature of a lighter’s fire-producing capability negates a design-duty to add child-proofing features.

## Decision

- The court granted Bic’s motion for partial summary judgment on the “failure to child-proof” design theory.
- The court held that, as a matter of Georgia law, Bic owed no duty to design an adult-use lighter to be child-proof.
- The ruling did not dispose of other theories, including any asserted manufacturing-defect claim unrelated to child-proofing.

## Legal Principles

- In Georgia negligence-based product design cases, a manufacturer’s duty is reasonable care; the manufacturer is not an insurer and need not design a product incapable of causing injury.
- Georgia law does not require products to be accident-proof or fool-proof when they are reasonably safe for their intended use.
- Where a product’s danger is open and obvious to an ordinary consumer, Georgia law generally does not impose a duty to redesign to eliminate that obvious danger.
- Design-defect duty analysis focuses on the product’s intended users and intended use; foreseeable access or misuse by unintended users (such as children) does not, by itself, create a duty to redesign for those unintended users.
- A federal court sitting in diversity must predict how the state supreme court would rule when state appellate courts have not addressed the precise duty question.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that Georgia law does not impose a duty on an adult-lighter manufacturer to add child-proof features to prevent injuries from children’s foreseeable misuse of an openly dangerous product, and it removed that design-defect theory from the case while leaving other claims for further litigation.


Floyd v. Bic Corp., 790 F. Supp. 276 (N.D. Ga. 1992)