Product liability cases usually focus on competing experts debating whether the design of the product is sufficiently safe. The usual defense is that the product is designed substantially similar to the products of other manufacturers and/or that various governmental or privately instituted standards or codes are not violated. Jurors are extremely curious about whether the product conforms with the standards in the industry. If it does, then they are extremely reluctant to find liability.
This whole field gets terribly confused by the use of the term "state of the art." The defense wants to argue that the "state of the art" represents customary standards in the industry or a failure to violate governmental standards or a failure to violate private standards such as those published by various ANSI committees. If the plaintiff is foolish enough to allow this evidence to come before the jury, he may lose.
Most products conform with the design standards of competing products, even though unsafe. The various private committees that promulgate privately published standards consist primarily of industry spokesmen. The net result is that the standards are so watered down that they merely reflect what is actually going on in the industry and represent only minimum safety standards. Occasionally there are even governmental standards which might apply, and again, these are usually so watered down politically that it is rare to find a violation.
If, in fact, there is a violation of customary standards in the industry or a violation of some private set of guidelines or even a violation of a governmental standard, then obviously the plaintiff wants to introduce that evidence, either under strict liability or negligence. In the more typical case, where no such violation occurs, the first step for the plaintiff is to drop the cause of action for negligence and proceed solely on strict liability. The law is quite clear that if plaintiff does this, then none of these types of evidence should be allowed before the jury.
Interestingly, if the court follows the law, the plaintiff should be able to bring in other products which incorporate improved safety devices, and the defendant should not be able to bring before the jury products which are substantially similar to the defendant's own product. The point here is that the purpose of introducing this evidence is to show technological feasibility, that is, that the product could have been made safer within the state of engineering knowledge at the time it was manufactured. Thus, the plaintiff can have it both ways: exclude evidence of products similar to the defendant's which show the custom in the industry and introduce other products with additional safety features to show that the technological knowledge and know-how existed at the time that defendant's product was manufactured.
State of the Art
The term "state of the art" is always misused by the defense to mean the custom in the industry, or whatever is actually being done by the majority of manufacturers. The law in California, however, clearly defines "state of the art" as technological feasibility. It doesn't matter whether any manufacturer has ever incorporated the appropriate techniques or devices in the product, so long as the state of engineering knowledge was such that this could have been done at the time the product was manufactured. The author, for example, maintains a library of reprinted engineering safety books whose original dates of publication are approximately the turn of the century. They demonstrate that the state of engineering knowledge for incorporating safety devices of the type involved in most cases has been known for 100 years. Another technique is to look for patents or even other manufactured products which have actually incorporated the appropriate safety device at a date that substantially predates the date of manufacture of the product involved in the lawsuit.
Industry Standards
Industry standards are often published in very fancy looking booklets entitled ANSI Codes, or UL Standards, or whatever, but they are all the same. Some are prompted by more charitable motivations than others, but sooner or later the industry controls these and the standards, no matter how glossy the publication, merely amount to either a recital of the status quo or minimum standards which do little to advance safety. If there is a violation of one of these standards and the plaintiff chooses to proceed on negligence, then he is entitled to introduce these violations as some evidence of negligence. But if the plaintiff proceeds only on strict liability, the law is clear that these standards, and even governmental codes and standards which are not violated by the product, are clearly inadmissible. The key cases in this area are McLaughlin v. Sikorsky Aircraft, 148 Cal. App.3d 203 (1983) and Rawlings v. D. P. Oliver, Inc., 97 Cal. App.3d 890 (1979).
The bottom line is that the cases all talk about the focus being on the product and not on the conduct of the manufacturer. It doesn't matter whether the manufacturer is conforming to industry custom or private or public codes. Compliance with those standards or custom is irrelevant in cases where the primary issue is whether the product has been made as safe as possible based on the state of engineering advancement as it existed at the time the product was manufactured. The law is intended to determine liability in the abstract and avoid negligence standards creeping into the mix.