Todd v. Societe Bic, S.A

9 F.3d 1216 (7th Cir. 1993)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Cori, four-years-old, picked up a cigarette lighter and set a small fire in her parents' bedroom. She was punished and told not to play with lighters or matches. There were certainly enough of them laying around the household with four adult smokers. Cori found a BIC lighter on a table in the living room and set fire to papers in her parents' bedroom. Tiffnay, 23-months-old, was sleeping and died. P sued D in product liability. P contends that D should have warned customers about the risks lighters pose to households with children and that BIC should have designed its lighters to resist children's efforts to use them. Failure to choose the right design or give proper warnings made the lighter defective or unreasonably dangerous. D conceded that misuse of lighters by children was foreseeable. In 1992 BIC began selling a child-resistant lighter. BIC claimed that it gave sufficient warnings. It is an established fact that fire attracts youngsters. In 1988-90 over 150 deaths, 1,100 injuries and nearly $70 million in property damages occurred because of such incidents. Parents who followed BIC's advice to keep lighters out of reach of children do not have fires. Had P followed this advice, there would have been no fire. P and the three other adults in the household had received the most vivid warning imaginable: Cori had started a fire with a cigarette lighter only a week earlier. D moved for summary judgment, and it was granted. P appealed.