Facts
- A mother bought “Wonder 8 Hair Oil,” labeled for use as a hair and body oil and listing ingredients, without warnings about child safety or ingestion hazards.
- The mother read the label before using the product.
- Her 11-month-old child, while unsupervised, ingested and aspirated the oil; it clogged his lungs, caused inflammatory respiratory failure, and he died about a month later.
- The estate sued the product packager/manufacturer, successor manufacturer, and retailer under negligence and warranty theories based on alleged failure to warn that ingestion could be harmful or fatal and that the product should be kept from small children.
- The trial court granted summary disposition to defendants, finding the risk from ingesting/inhaling hair and body oil was open and obvious under Michigan’s products-liability statute.
- The court of appeals reversed, concluding a jury could find that while some nonlethal harm might be obvious, the risk of death was not.
- The Michigan Supreme Court granted leave to appeal and consolidated the manufacturers’ and retailer’s appeals.
Issues
- Under MCL 600.2948(2), does the duty to warn require warning of specific injury outcomes (including death), or only of material risks that are not obvious or common knowledge to a reasonably prudent user?
- Was the material risk of harm from ingesting and inhaling a hair/body oil obvious to a reasonably prudent product user as a matter of law?
- Can breach-of-warranty claims based on inadequate warnings proceed when the statute imposes no duty to warn?
Decision
- Reversed the court of appeals and reinstated the trial court’s grant of summary disposition for the manufacturers and retailer.
- Held MCL 600.2948(2) limits the duty to warn to material risks that are not obvious to a reasonably prudent user and are not (or should not be) common knowledge to persons similarly situated to the injured person.
- Concluded the material risk of harm from ingesting and inhaling the hair/body oil was obvious to a reasonably prudent user; therefore, failure-to-warn claims were not actionable.
- Rejected the view that defendants had a duty to warn of the “kind of injuries” suffered (e.g., death or respiratory failure), as opposed to the material risk.
- Dismissed warranty claims premised on inadequate warnings because no warning was required under the statute.
Legal Principles
- Under MCL 600.2948(2), a manufacturer or seller must warn only of material risks that are not obvious to a reasonably prudent product user and are not, or should not be, common knowledge to similarly situated persons.
- The duty to warn concerns material risks, not a requirement to enumerate specific injury types, mechanisms, or degrees of harm resulting from misuse.
- When a product’s harmfulness from an obvious misuse is apparent as a matter of common sense, courts may resolve duty-to-warn claims as a matter of law and grant summary disposition.
- Breach-of-warranty theories predicated solely on allegedly inadequate warnings fail where no underlying statutory duty to warn exists.
Conclusion
The Michigan Supreme Court held that ingesting or inhaling a topical hair/body oil presents an obvious material risk of harm to a reasonably prudent user, eliminating any statutory duty to warn; without such a duty, both failure-to-warn and warning-based warranty claims were properly dismissed on summary disposition.