Product Liability: Tipping The Scales Against Industry

Product liability in Canada is evolving, with increasing government intervention likely in 2025 and beyond. This shift is fueled by new legislation enabling governments to sue for recovery of health care costs associated with various products and services. This legislation generally removes traditional legal barriers to findings of liability, such as the requirement to prove causation, and provides formulas to dispense with time-consuming damages calculations and restricts limitation defences. Recent legislative initiatives indicate an appetite by governments to extend this type of legislation beyond tobacco and opioids, which were the subject of the first such statutes.

A more active regulatory environment will also lead to more consumer claims. For example, voluntary product recalls, in response to potential safety concerns, are providing fuel for class actions even in the absence of proven harm, as we wrote in 2023. Although the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected