Plaintiff, John Sykes, has filed a products liability lawsuit against our client, Brighton Hardware Company. Sykes alleges

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Plaintiff, John Sykes, has filed a products liability lawsuit against our client, Brighton Hardware Company. Sykes alleges that Brighton used a defective design for the production of the newest model of its “super-fast desktop PC” named the “ULTRA9000UBERPC.” Sykes is claiming product liability because he alleges that Brighton knew about the defective design, never tested it, and let the model be released and sold to the public directly anyways. Apparently, our client’s C.E.O., Biff Tannen, was quoted in board meeting minutes as saying, “Yo, this P.C. is too super-fast for us to worry about testing it and refining the design to get rid of the monitor issue. We gotta get it out to market so we can finally kill Apple.”

John Sykes was hooking up his “ULTRA9000UBERPC” to his three (3) curved 55” LED monitors when suddenly all the metal parts on the monitors were jolted with 600 volts of electricity. The electricity passed through the monitors’ metal bases, into Sykes’ retro 1950’s mint green desk, and right into Sykes’ hands, causing low and high voltage burns to his hands.

Fortunately for our client, the “ULTRA9000UBERPC” came with a large instruction booklet with warnings against hooking up the P.C. to more than two monitors. On the fourth to last page of the instruction booklet, in size eight (8) DokChampa font, in the middle of the page, is the following instruction:

Warning: Do not use this P.C. with more than two (2) monitors.

Moreover, Sykes has admitted to having not even read the instruction booklet: “I was so pumped to get this sucker hooked up that I didn’t even think about reading the instructions.” The above warning was not on the product box or in any other place, but it’s clearly in the instruction booklet.

I believe that we are likely to lose on Sykes’ product liability claim, unless we can assert some kind of defense. Based on the above facts, I think we may be able to assert a defense against the claim that could help our client avoid any liability. I think there are at least two to three defenses to product liability we can try out, but before we do I need to know what they are and whether we are likely to succeed on them or not. I need you to write a memorandum about (1) whether or not such a defense(s) exists based on the facts I have presented you (if so, what are they?), and (2) whether or not our client would be successful in using the defense(s), if one or more exists, and why? Be objective – I just need the information.