Product liability litigation requires overwhelming amounts of context, and courts can often take years to fully sort out applicable precedents for manufacturers to follow.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in the case of Air & Liquid Systems Corp. v. DeVries addressed whether an equipment manufacturer has a legal duty to warn about a product manufactured by someone else that is added to its equipment years after manufacturing and selling that equipment. The Supreme Court ultimately said “yes” under certain circumstances but limited its decision to very specific instances related solely to maritime cases and not to product liability cases in general.