Amazon Set Up to Skirt Product Liability, Third Circuit Told

Amazon.com Inc. should be held liable as a product seller because its business model for “marketplace” sales denies recompense to large numbers of injured consumers, a consumer-oriented law firm told the Third Circuit.

Many of Amazon’s suppliers are overseas, anonymous, and “fly-by-night” companies, Public Justice PC said.

Amazon’s marketplace “is a direct pipeline to the United States consumer market for dangerous, and even banned, goods,” Public Justice told the appeals court in a friend-of-the-court brief. The firm cited a string of cases in which people allege they suffered injuries and property damage by Amazon product suppliers who couldn’t later be ...