'A live issue' on liability

While there are restrictions around online sales of items like guns and illicit drugs, regulations haven’t kept up with the growth of massive e-commerce stores like Amazon that sell a little bit of everything.

The substance at issue in these lawsuits is generally not available at 99% purity in brick-and-mortar stores. Although it can be used for food preservation or in medical lab settings, its high concentration form does not have a common household use, the plaintiffs argue.

Amazon has said that it constantly monitors its website to identify any products that may be unsafe, following customer feedback and external data. In response to questions about the sale of this chemical, an Amazon spokesperson said it is a “legal and widely available product,” but high concentrations are not “intended for direct consumption.”

“Unfortunately, like many products, it can be misused. To minimize the potential for product misuse, we are limiting the sale” to business buyers, the spokesperson continued.

While these lawsuits focus on a narrow set of circumstances, they highlight an unresolved question of who is liable when a product is intentionally misused. That question gets even trickier when the product comes from a third-party vendor using a platform like Amazon to reach its customers.

Amazon — which says more than 60% of its sales are from independent merchants — has faced several product liability lawsuits but those revolved around defective products.

Still, Oriene Shin, who is part of Consumer Reports’ policy counsel focused on product safety, said the series of lawsuits Amazon now faces are “falling in line with a long list of product liability cases coming up.”

“It’s really a live issue right now on where, or how, Amazon should be acting,” Shin said. “One of the things I’d love to see come out of this litigation is more proactive practices from Amazon — but the question is how would we see those?”

Shin said Amazon isn’t perfect, but she doesn’t count it among the worst online platforms. She said Amazon has been responsive when Consumer Reports flags unsafe products, and compared it to platforms like Facebook Marketplace, that have virtually no restrictions on products or sellers.

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