Amazon Hit with Lawsuit over Eclipse Glasses

Megalith

Megalith

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A couple from South Carolina is suing Amazon after receiving eclipse glasses that they claim were defective: Corey Payne and his fiancée, Kayla Harris, used them to view the eclipse on August 21 but later developed vision impairment, including blurriness and distorted vision. They are seeking to represent other customers who never received a warning from Amazon and suffered similar injuries from the company’s alleged negligence.

The couple said they did not look into the sky without wearing the glasses when they viewed the eclipse. Starting on August 10, Amazon said it began to email customers to issue a recall of potentially hazardous solar eclipse glasses it was unable to verify as having been manufactured by reputable companies. Amazon did not disclose the scale of the recall or a list of affected vendors. Payne and Harris said they did not receive notice of the recall.
 
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They have a point, if you are going to sell eclipse glasses, you better make sure they work properly.(IMHO, too risky, i'd never sell them)


If it was a third party seller... then it will get tossed out. If it was actually amazon, it has merit.
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
So, did they have fake glasses, or legit ones?

And since the glasses were "Defective" why aren't you suing the maker? When your Sony TV burns down your house, you sue Sony, not Best Buy.....
Click to expand...

Exactly, sue the manufacturer, not the distributor. These people are just looking for a quick payout and Amazon has deep pockets. I sure their lawsuit will be thrown out of court...

More than likely, the glasses were shipped/distributed by Amazon.com but actually sold by a 3rd party company. Also, Amazon refunded the purchase of most eclipse glasses and publicly announced not to use them.

Stupid!
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
So, did they have fake glasses, or legit ones?

And since the glasses were "Defective" why aren't you suing the maker? When your Sony TV burns down your house, you sue Sony, not Best Buy.....
Click to expand...

Well some contributing factors to why this is different than your analogy.

1) Best buy doesn't have a business model that inherently permits suppliers to obscure the origin and a manufacturer of a product. Or lie about it's features. Before, during, and after purchase, you thought you were buying a sony tv and got a sony tv.

2) Amazon also digs the hole deeper by stocking 3rd party items in their warehouses. Unlike sellers who drop ship, they had the product in hand and thus you cna argue they had an obligation to some basic due dilligence, such as not selling things beyond their expiration date and such.

3) Amazon removed sales of the items from their store, BECAUSE they were counterfeit, expired, or otherwise unreliable, thus admitting they had some level of responsibility to the consumer.
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
So, did they have fake glasses, or legit ones?

And since the glasses were "Defective" why aren't you suing the maker? When your Sony TV burns down your house, you sue Sony, not Best Buy.....
Click to expand...

They should be suing the maker. But most likely the maker is a now closed down Chinese subsidiary of another soon to declare bankruptcy China based company. Good luck collecting from them. They are counting their profits and making plans for the 2024 eclipse.

Amazon makes a nice deep pockets US based target even if their actual blame percentage is small.
 
I didn't buy glasses from Amazon, but do recall seeing recall notices form Amazon. I like the other arguments presented: sue the manufacturer, not the distributor. Makes sense.
 
I remember quite a few warnings online about bad eclipse glasses. It was pretty much everywhere. News, Facebook, Twitter... shit, my Mom called to ask if I had the right ones. To claim they didn't know really makes it unbelievable to me. They'd really have to prove they were off grid to not know they might have been the wrong ones. Everyone else was checking theirs to be sure. At some point, the due diligence is done by the seller and it becomes the consumers responsibility. The lack of responsibility of consumers lately (or forever, I don't know... I've just noticed it more lately) is sad. If you cut yourself with a knife, you don't sue the knife company for not saying it was sharp.

I hope it gets thrown out. Amazon had no fault in this.
 
I ordered legit glasses made by Celestron, but the shipping date was sketchy, so I also ordered some Chinese ones that claimed it met ISO standards as a backup. I received both sets, and then a few days before the eclipse, I received an email from Amazon not to use the Chinese ones and that they had refunded me for them. We used the Celestron ones, of course, and they worked great. I've put them in a safe place so that we can use them in 2024.
 
raz-0 said:
Well some contributing factors to why this is different than your analogy.

1) Best buy doesn't have a business model that inherently permits suppliers to obscure the origin and a manufacturer of a product. Or lie about it's features. Before, during, and after purchase, you thought you were buying a sony tv and got a sony tv.

2) Amazon also digs the hole deeper by stocking 3rd party items in their warehouses. Unlike sellers who drop ship, they had the product in hand and thus you cna argue they had an obligation to some basic due dilligence, such as not selling things beyond their expiration date and such.

3) Amazon removed sales of the items from their store, BECAUSE they were counterfeit, expired, or otherwise unreliable, thus admitting they had some level of responsibility to the consumer.
Click to expand...
You're going in circles with point #1. Amazon sold "wingway" glasses. Customer got "wingway" glasses. "wingway" glasses aren't safe. It's no difference than the Best Buy Situation. Your point is only valid if they sold them as "wingway" glassses and they were "wingwu" glasses. And Amazon wasn't a victim of the deception but a participant. You have to prove the last two pieces.
 
Sigh... When I was a kid we didn't have fancy eclipse glasses. We took a piece of broken glass, held it above a candle to get it all sooty and it worked great. Didn't need to buy stuff to use once and throw away...
On topic - let 'em. Fun to watch these :)
 
raz-0 said:
Well some contributing factors to why this is different than your analogy.

1) Best buy doesn't have a business model that inherently permits suppliers to obscure the origin and a manufacturer of a product. Or lie about it's features. Before, during, and after purchase, you thought you were buying a sony tv and got a sony tv.

2) Amazon also digs the hole deeper by stocking 3rd party items in their warehouses. Unlike sellers who drop ship, they had the product in hand and thus you cna argue they had an obligation to some basic due dilligence, such as not selling things beyond their expiration date and such.

3) Amazon removed sales of the items from their store, BECAUSE they were counterfeit, expired, or otherwise unreliable, thus admitting they had some level of responsibility to the consumer.
Click to expand...

Literally grasping at straws with your pont #1 and then clinging from same point on your other reasons.

I bet you're not a lawyer because you would be homeless by now.
 
Koween said:
Sigh... When I was a kid we didn't have fancy eclipse glasses. We took a piece of broken glass, held it above a candle to get it all sooty and it worked great. Didn't need to buy stuff to use once and throw away...
On topic - let 'em. Fun to watch these :)
Click to expand...

In my day we didn't have pieces of broken glass. We had to chew a small hole in a of leather and let the sunlight shine through it and onto a flat rock :p
 
*grabs popcorn*

It has been well in the news about the eclipse glasses not "certified", maybe email notice went into Junk folder? A quick get rich attempt. May have to check email server. Amazon did not manufacture the glasses.
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
So, did they have fake glasses, or legit ones?

And since the glasses were "Defective" why aren't you suing the maker? When your Sony TV burns down your house, you sue Sony, not Best Buy.....
Click to expand...

Depends, did Best Buy have reason to believe ahead of time that the Sony TV would burn my house down? If Ford purposely makes a choice to go with a cheaper part knowing that there is more risk of failure but assume the risk of failure in order to make $1 more profit per car and that fails and causes accidents or death you fault Ford for their choice. In this case if Amazon selected to sell themselves faulty glasses because they were cheaper and they could make more profit they should be included, but so should the maker. Otherwise should just be the maker.
 
I see recalls posted on store bullitin boards every time I go. Take a look at costcos bullitin when you leave. I've never been notified via email that I recall about any of them, and Costco isn't sued. I can't see how this has legs. Amazon didn't make the glasses. It'd only work if amazon tried to hide the fact they were counterfeit. I'm confident that's not the case.
 
At the end of the day Amazon is, for the most part, a reseller. (They do have a few of their own products) However anything they don't make and they just resell, they are not responsible for the products themselves. A Chevy dealer never pays out due to a vehicle production or design defect. They are not the manufacturer. Thus this is another poorly worded article. Amazon will have nothing to do with this in the end and will exit this lawsuit very quickly. This will then loose publicity and be against some Chinese junk maker. Now, will they ever see anything from that? You never know. They might. If the company is somewhat established and regularly ships products here they may actually pay something to make this go away. If the plaintiffs get really lucky. Can you imagine if resellers were actually responsible for products. Ebay would explode.
 
Vader1975 said:
At the end of the day Amazon is, for the most part, a reseller. (They do have a few of their own products) However anything they don't make and they just resell, they are not responsible for the products themselves. A Chevy dealer never pays out due to a vehicle production or design defect. They are not the manufacturer. Thus this is another poorly worded article. Amazon will have nothing to do with this in the end and will exit this lawsuit very quickly. This will then loose publicity and be against some Chinese junk maker. Now, will they ever see anything from that? You never know. They might. If the company is somewhat established and regularly ships products here they may actually pay something to make this go away. If the plaintiffs get really lucky. Can you imagine if resellers were actually responsible for products. Ebay would explode.
Click to expand...

But what about when that Chevy dealership falsifies the vehicle records, resets the odometer back a few thousand miles, puts quick patch jobs in place to make something run ling enough to get it off the lot and lies about issues / damage to the car? false advertising is illegal. So if something was sold by Amazon (not a 3rd party but themselves) and they created a false description with the intent to mislead people that is on them. Just as the dealership and not Chevy is the one at fault if the gauges are screwed with to make a sale.
 
I knew that this shit was going to happen, that's why I had no interest in looking up at the sky during the eclipse. In the year 2024 it'll be cool to see day turn to night for a few minutes but you won't be catching me looking up at it, glasses or no glasses. My vision is way too important to me for me to be risking permanent vision damage. Ask a person who's totally blind how life is like without vision. Nope... I wouldn't do anything to put my vision at risk.
 
Exavior said:
But what about when that Chevy dealership falsifies the vehicle records, resets the odometer back a few thousand miles, puts quick patch jobs in place to make something run ling enough to get it off the lot and lies about issues / damage to the car? false advertising is illegal. So if something was sold by Amazon (not a 3rd party but themselves) and they created a false description with the intent to mislead people that is on them. Just as the dealership and not Chevy is the one at fault if the gauges are screwed with to make a sale.
Click to expand...

You are aggressively off-base to the original comment. Dreaming up wild scenarios. Taking direct action on the product aka modifying it or editing its description as the re-seller in a fraudulent way is not anywhere near what I described.
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
So, did they have fake glasses, or legit ones?

And since the glasses were "Defective" why aren't you suing the maker? When your Sony TV burns down your house, you sue Sony, not Best Buy.....
Click to expand...


True, but why pass up a perfectly good opportunity to sue Best Buy?
 
Vader1975 said:
You are aggressively off-base to the original comment. Dreaming up wild scenarios. Taking direct action on the product aka modifying it or editing its description as the re-seller in a fraudulent way is not anywhere near what I described.
Click to expand...

Your statement is that a reseller can never be at fault in any case for the products as they do not make them but are simply giving you a way to buy them. I gave you an example of how you are wrong and where they would in fact be the one at fault. To which you now agree that a reseller can in fact at times be the one and not the manufacture of said item that is the correct person to go after. In this case we do not know that Amazon did not willingly and knowingly post the items with false descriptions in order to defraud people. You are basically trying to say that Amazon would never do anything wrong, we have to assume they never did anything wrong and based on that merit they can't be the ones at fault in any way and it has to be the manufacture 100% of the time.

In this case did these glass makers come to amazon and ask them to have their glasses sold through Amazon and give them a description which was posted by Amazon 100% as issued? Or did Amazon wanting to make a quick and easy buck go looking for some cheap glasses they could sell with a markup and find the cheapest ones they could to put up on their site and then create a misleading description for the item? Or did a 3rd party seller create a store on Amazon and sell their stuff through that with Amazon having no part in any of it? We do not know enough of the entire events leading up to these items being on the Amazon page to say 100% in any way that Amazon did or did not engage in any incorrect actions that puts them at any fault in this case. So you can't say that it is a wild scenario when we don't know at they didn't commit fraud. Not saying they did, not saying they didn't. Only that them having committed fraud is just as likely of a possibility as them not having committing fraud.
 
Exavior said:
Your statement is that a reseller can never be at fault in any case for the products as they do not make them but are simply giving you a way to buy them. I gave you an example of how you are wrong and where they would in fact be the one at fault.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but in my opinion Vader1975 is correct here and you are off-base. He at no point made a statement that the reseller can never be wrong. His statement regarding a Chevy dealer was "A Chevy dealer never pays out due to a vehicle production or design defect." - and this is entirely correct.

You were, as he pointed out, bringing up a scenario in which a reseller deliberately committed an illegal act (winding back an odo) - this is a very long way away from a reseller stocking and selling an item in good faith and I can't for the life of me think why you thought this was a good analogy, as it applies only to the second, most improbable scenario of the three you mentioned with regards Amazon selling a product. That scenario requires, however, a couple of pretty wild leaps - first, that Amazon makes up the product descriptions themselves (not the case in my experience), and second, that Amazon KNOWINGLY wrote a false/misleading product description to sell something that was not fit for purpose. I can buy that for formatting/proofreading reasons that they may have paraphrased information from the manufacturer, but not that they just made it up as they saw fit.

The onus is also not on Amazon to prove or disprove manufacturer claims for the goods that it sells, just as a supermarket isn't tasked with having to verify the manufacturer-stated nutritional data of everything it sells in case the product manufacturer is telling porkies.
 
focbde said:
Sorry, but in my opinion Vader1975 is correct here and you are off-base. He at no point made a statement that the reseller can never be wrong. His statement regarding a Chevy dealer was "A Chevy dealer never pays out due to a vehicle production or design defect." - and this is entirely correct.

You were, as he pointed out, bringing up a scenario in which a reseller deliberately committed an illegal act (winding back an odo) - this is a very long way away from a reseller stocking and selling an item in good faith and I can't for the life of me think why you thought this was a good analogy, as it applies only to the second, most improbable scenario of the three you mentioned with regards Amazon selling a product. That scenario requires, however, a couple of pretty wild leaps - first, that Amazon makes up the product descriptions themselves (not the case in my experience), and second, that Amazon KNOWINGLY wrote a false/misleading product description to sell something that was not fit for purpose. I can buy that for formatting/proofreading reasons that they may have paraphrased information from the manufacturer, but not that they just made it up as they saw fit.

The onus is also not on Amazon to prove or disprove manufacturer claims for the goods that it sells, just as a supermarket isn't tasked with having to verify the manufacturer-stated nutritional data of everything it sells in case the product manufacturer is telling porkies.
Click to expand...

The case here revolves around people ordering something and not believing that they received something of the quality they were told. The response by Vader1975 was to state that they are only a reseller and thus can't be responsible for the materials in any way just like a Chevy dealership can never be responsible for the car. If you want to consider me off base for showing an example of when they are that is fine. I was simply trying to show that being a reseller does not remove all possibility for the fault to lie with them. Is that the most unlikely possibility, maybe. But that doesn't change that could be a possibility. Will the case get tossed out? Probably, however not simply because they are a reseller and thus can not be at fault in any way. If anything it will come down to they did nothing wrong. Not because they couldn't do anything wrong period but simply because in this case they never.

When looking at the actual laws, they do include the stores as a possible party for cases like this.

Liability for a product defect could rest with any party in the product's chain of distribution, such as:

  • The product manufacturer;
  • A manufacturer of component parts;
  • A party that assembles or installs the product;
  • The wholesaler; and
  • The retail store that sold the product to the consumer.
For strict liability to apply, the sale of a product must be made in the regular course of the supplier's business. Thus, someone who sells a product at a garage sale would probably not be liable in a product liability action.
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Digging deeper for strict liability, you don't need to prove that the store or manufacture even did anything on purpose. Just that a product was sold that when used under normal conditions and without alteration caused injury or damage, at which point the store or maker can be held liable. However, and this is a major party there, you must also be able to prove that you had no idea of any risk or issues before using said item. So the fact that Amazon reported that some glasses were not up to a certain quality could remove them from that list of possible people to go after. However every part of the law does refer to a retail store being a possible liable party, so falling into that group doesn't remove you. In the case of Chevy vs a Chevy dealer, Chevy has more money so most will probably go after them and not the dealer. Although if you guys don't want to agree with that, that is fine. Doesn't change that a case is before a judge and the court having a better understanding of the law than any of us will decide if the case should be thrown out right away or be allowed to proceed.
 
Exavior said:
I was simply trying to show that being a reseller does not remove all possibility for the fault to lie with them. Is that the most unlikely possibility, maybe. But that doesn't change that could be a possibility.
Click to expand...

Which is my point entirely - no-one ever stated that there's no way the reseller can be to blame for ANYTHING they do, only that they cannot be held liable for a manufacturing defect, for example. And again, the Chevy dealership example was correct in that case.

From the law excerpt you raised above, it's important to note that the line 'Liability for a product could rest with any party in the product's chain of distribution' doesn't mean that the plaintiff gets to choose who is liable. If they decide to sue Amazon, they have to prove how, where, when etc. they are responsible, which is exceedingly hard to do (primarily because they AREN'T liable). As you say, Amazon also did report that some glasses were not up to a certain quality level, which shows due diligence, not negligence, and so really the manufacturer is the only one you'd have much success going after.
 
Thanks, Focbde. You create your own page when selling on Amazon to describe and picture your product by entering the data in a form with a + pictures section. Thus the information provided is actually from either the creator of the product or a distributor. Therefore Amazon isn't involved in product descriptions from its reseller network. Amazon does, however, respond to customer complaints about products. This is how they became aware of the defective glasses as some customers tested them and notified Amazon who then sent out a notification to its customer base that had purchased the products the information that some were defective not to use them and to return them for a refund. It is going to be very hard in this case to do anything against Amazon. I agree with focbde that this will be redirected to the parties responsible for inaccurate representation and/or poor manufacturing causing harm. Amazon is thrown in as a dream to possibly get extra money. I just don't see that happening.
 
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