If consumers were to ask: "how am I protected against the sale of defectively designed or defectively manufactured products in Pennsylvania?", they would learn that there are a host of legal constructs to incentivize manufacturers and sellers to only market safe products. Yet, every day some consumers suffer injury because of a product's flawed design or defective manufacture. Most of this harm is foreseeable and preventable. It's not that manufacturers (for the most part) plan to injure product users, but rather harm typically occurs because the inherent injury-causing flaw was left unguarded or not detected, or not considered a significant enough risk to motivate the manufacturer to remedy it. When injury occurs, Pennsylvanians have the right to file a lawsuit claiming that their injury was avoidable and due to the marketing of a defective product. Products liability lawsuits are extremely difficult to win. Typically, these cases pit the consumer against a national or international corporate conglomerate that has a team of lawyers ready and willing to take every step necessary to beat down the claim. The legal and factual hurdles a plaintiff faces when he files a products case are daunting. And, while our common law has adopted appropriate standards of care by which jurors gauge a product's safety, and judge whether the injury suffered was caused by a defective product, getting to trial and then fending off the substantial defense evidence offered to refute these claims remains formidable.

This article addresses one element of the defense of products liability claims that has for years been excluded, but it may become admissible in the future: the defense of a product defect claim by showing that the product was designed in compliance with industry-government practices, customs and standards.