Silly Product Warning: Don’t Pick Up Broken Glass with Bare Hands

As a professor of tort and products liability law, I appreciate that manufacturers often feel the need to warn consumers of obvious risks, even though products liability law does not impose a duty to warn of obvious risks.

First, it’s safer from a liability standpoint for the product maker/seller because it avoids the possibility that a jury might, in hindsight after an injury, disagree as to whether a particular risk was obvious. Moreover, warning of obvious risks serves a re-enforcement/reminder function.

The downside of being inundated with warnings of obvious risks is the “dilution effect.” When consumers are bombarded with warnings of risks that are patently obvious, it dilutes the impact of the warnings that really matter.

Case in point: Do we really need a verbal and pictorial warning that people should not pick up broken glass with their bare hands? … Probably, because we’ve all done it.

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