Delios Licorish's suffered serious burns when a L'Oreal product, applied to her hair, ignited. Even though the bottle clearly warned (in red, capital letters) to keep "LIT TOBACCO PRODUCTS" away from her head, Licorish sued the manufacturer for failure to warn, failure to recall, breach of warranty, and defective design.
When the company moved to dismiss the case, the New York County Civil Court sided with Licorish.
On appeal, the Appellate Term, First Department, thought there wasn't any "causal connection" between the company's supposed "failure to warn" and the resulting accident, and dismissed that part of the lady's case. They also tossed out her "failure to recall" theory (which isn't a recognizable legal claim), and her "breach of warranty" claim (because she didn't adequately oppose that part of the company dismissal request). But it kept the woman's design-defect claim, because her papers set out an argument that the product presented consumers with an "unreasonable risk of harm."
That was some twist.
To view a copy of the Appellate Term's decision, please use this link: Licorish v. L'Oreal USA, Inc.