## Facts

- A child received routine immunizations, including a DPT vaccine booster at about age two.
- After the booster, she allegedly suffered severe neurological injury, leaving her permanently and totally disabled and requiring constant care.
- Her parents sued multiple DPT vaccine manufacturers and the child’s pediatrician, alleging defective design and inadequate warnings.
- The parents could not identify which manufacturer made the specific DPT dose alleged to have caused the injury.
- To overcome the identification problem, the parents sought market-share (industry-wide) liability, apportioning damages among manufacturers according to their shares of the relevant market.

## Issues

1. Whether New Jersey should permit market-share or other collective-liability theories in a products-liability action for alleged DPT vaccine injury when the plaintiff cannot identify the manufacturer of the specific dose.
2. Whether adoption of such liability is appropriate given public-health concerns and existing federal and state vaccine regulation and compensation schemes.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of New Jersey reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated the trial court’s dismissal.
- The court declined to adopt market-share or industry-wide liability for DPT vaccine manufacturers in this context.
- The court held that the inability to identify the manufacturer of the allegedly injuring dose was fatal under traditional products-liability causation requirements.
- The court emphasized that expanding liability in this setting risked disrupting vaccine supply and intruding into policy choices addressed through legislation and regulation.

## Legal Principles

- Products-liability causation generally requires proof that the defendant manufactured (or supplied) the product that caused the plaintiff’s injury.
- Market-share liability is an exceptional departure from ordinary causation principles and is not automatically transferable from other contexts to vaccines.
- Courts may consider the broader statutory and regulatory framework when deciding whether to create new common-law liability doctrines, especially where the subject involves significant public-health policy.
- Where legislatures have created (or are creating) specialized compensation and regulatory mechanisms for vaccine injuries, courts should be reluctant to impose broad, industry-wide tort liability without clear legislative direction.

## Conclusion

The court refused to impose market-share liability on DPT vaccine manufacturers because the plaintiff could not identify the maker of the specific dose and because expanding collective tort liability threatened public-health objectives and conflicted with the legislature’s role in structuring vaccine injury compensation and vaccine-market stability.


Shackil v. Lederle Lab'ys, 116 N.J. 155 (N.J. 1989)