Civil Liability Resulted from Product Defect

The simple customer-supplier relationships in the past has changed today due to the diversity, complexity and use of new technologies, and different people as intermediaries, business brokers or distributors have been placed between the producer and the consumer. For that reason, today, unlike in the past, customers or consumers typically do not know the producers, and with the intervention of governments in these relations, the issue of "consumer rights" has been created. In this regard, the question now is that if the consumer is harmed as a result of a defect in a product, on what criterion, the civil liability of the suppliers of the goods is based? Another question is that whether the supplier is only responsible to compensate the buyer of the goods for the defect or loss, or he is also responsible to compensate all other consumers or customers who have suffered damages or losses due to product defect. In this article, while examining the various principles proposed on the subject, the Iranian legislator's desire to accept sole responsibility in accordance with Articles 2 and 18 of the Consumer Protection Law has been inferred. The buyer of the defective product, in addition to guaranteeing the implementation of the khiyar-e ayb[1], or Arsh[2] can also invoke the coercive liability of the supplier to compensate his damages, but due to the defect of the law, other people who have suffered damages have no way to compensate the damages except through general rules of civil liability and reference to the provisions of the civil liability law and the provisions related to losses and causing the losses.