How Does Misusing a Product Affect a Georgia Injury Claim?
On this page
In two ways. Misuse the manufacturer could not reasonably foresee goes to whether there was a defect or a duty at all, because a manufacturer is not required to make a product safe against every use. Misuse that is the injured person’s own fault reduces the award under Georgia’s apportionment statute, and bars it at 50 percent or more; the Supreme Court of Georgia held in Johns v. Suzuki Motor of America, Inc. (2020) that this applies to strict product liability claims.
Misuse and the scope of the manufacturer’s duty
Georgia decisions hold that a manufacturer is not an insurer. In Greenway v. Peabody International Corp. (1982), the Court of Appeals quoted the principle that “virtually any article, of whatever type or design, is capable of producing injury when put to particular uses or misuses”, so “a manufacturer has no duty so to design his product as to render it wholly incapable of producing injury”. The Supreme Court reaffirmed in Banks v. ICI Americas, Inc. (1994) that “a manufacturer is not an insurer that its product is, from a design viewpoint, incapable of producing injury”.
The duty to warn has the same boundary. It covers “foreseeable dangers arising from the reasonable use for which the product is intended” (Camden Oil Co. v. Jackson, 2004). A use the manufacturer could anticipate, even if not the intended one, can still require a safer design or a warning; a use it could not reasonably anticipate falls outside the duty.
Misuse as the plaintiff’s fault: Johns v. Suzuki
Adrian Johns was badly hurt when the front brake on his Suzuki motorcycle failed. The evidence showed a design defect in the front brake master cylinder that created a corrosive condition and caused total brake failure, and Suzuki had issued a recall notice about the part about two months after his crash. Johns admitted that, contrary to the owner’s manual’s instruction to replace the brake fluid every two years, he had not changed it in the eight years he owned the motorcycle.
The question for the Supreme Court was whether § 51-12-33(a), which reduces damages in proportion to the plaintiff’s own fault, applies to a strict liability claim under § 51-1-11. The Court held that it does, affirming the Court of Appeals. The practical effect: a user’s failure to follow maintenance instructions or a warning can be assigned a percentage of fault, reducing the recovery, and § 51-12-33(g) bars recovery entirely at 50 percent or more.
Putting the two together
| Kind of misuse | Effect | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Unforeseeable use of the product | Goes to whether there was a defect or a duty to warn; can defeat the claim | Greenway; Banks; Camden Oil |
| Foreseeable misuse the design or warning should have addressed | The product can still be defective; the user's share of fault is weighed | Banks; § 51-12-33 |
| User's failure to follow maintenance or warnings | Reduces damages by the user's percentage of fault; bars at 50 percent | Johns; § 51-12-33(a), (g) |
How the 50 percent rule works is explained in Georgia’s 50 percent comparative fault rule, and the warning claim in what you must prove in a failure-to-warn claim.
Facts that decide a misuse argument
- How the product was being used at the time, compared with its labeling and marketing.
- Whether that use was predictable from the product’s design, advertising, or past incidents.
- What the manual and warnings said about the use and about maintenance.
- Whether the manufacturer knew of similar incidents or issued a recall.
Sources
- O.C.G.A. §§ 51-1-11, 51-12-33.
- Greenway v. Peabody International Corp., 163 Ga. App. 698 (1982)
- Banks v. ICI Americas, Inc., 264 Ga. 732 (1994)
- Camden Oil Co. v. Jackson, 270 Ga. App. 837 (2004)
- Johns v. Suzuki Motor of America, Inc., 310 Ga. 159 (2020)
General information about Georgia law as of October 2026. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.