By David Luck

Introduction 

In products-liability suits, Plaintiffs often premise liability on an alleged “failure to warn.” This type of claim can travel under negligence or strict-liability theories, or both. While there are some distinctions between negligence and strict-liability warnings claims, they each boil down to (1) whether the warnings accompanying the item are inadequate under an objective standard, and, if so, (2) whether the inadequacy of the warnings caused the plaintiff’s injury. Under Florida law, manufacturers and distributors of consumer products have a duty to provide adequate product warnings in order to avoid unreasonable risks of harm to potential users. However, there are no decisions from Florida state courts imposing a duty to warn in Spanish in addition to English. Indeed, the only decisions addressing this issue under Florida law come from federal district courts sitting in Florida.

Application under Florida Law 

There are three reported decisions from the United States District Courts for the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida addressing the issue of whether a manufacturer or distributor might have a duty to warn in Spanish: (1) Farias v. Mr. Heater, Inc., 757 F. Supp. 2d 1284 (S.D. Fla. 2010);[1] (2) Medina v. Louisville Ladder, Inc., 496 F. Supp. 2d 1324 (M.D. Fla. 2007); and (3) Stanley Industries, Inc. v. W.M. Barr & Co., Inc., 784 F. Supp. 1570 (S.D. Fla. 1992). Both Farias and Medina held that Florida does not recognize a general common-law duty to warn in Spanish (and, presumably, in any other foreign language). These decisions further explained that it would be improper for a federal district court to expand Florida common law beyond its existing parameters as determined by Florida’s state courts. Indeed, as noted above, there are no Florida state-court decisions imposing such a duty.

However, an earlier decision from the Southern District of Florida, Stanley, appears to assume that when a manufacturer and distributor jointly advertise a consumer product in Spanish in an area with a significant population that speaks only Spanish (e.g., portions of Miami-Dade County, Florida), then the manufacturer and distributor undertake a duty to warn in Spanish. While Stanley addresses the issue as one of adequacy of the non-Spanish warnings, duty is a threshold issue of law for the court. Therefore, by denying summary judgment and permitting the fact-finder an opportunity to hold a manufacturer and distributor liable for failing to provide Spanish-language warnings, Stanley assumed that, in some situations, there is a duty to warn in Spanish under Florida law. However, the Southern District’s later decision in Farias, the Middle District’s decision in Medina, and at least one federal decision outside Florida, Martinez v. Triad Controls, 593 F. Supp. 2d 741, 764-65 (E.D. Pa. 2009), disagree with Stanley or limit it to its facts.

Conclusion 

While there is no indication that Florida recognizes a general common-law duty to warn in Spanish, if a manufacturer or distributor elects to advertise and market a particular consumer product in Spanish, it should be prepared to include product instructions and warnings that its target audience (Spanish speakers) can understand. Outside this limited context, if the product is nationally distributed and there is no foreign-language product advertising, English-only instructions and warnings appear to suffice under Florida law.

For more information, contact Gregory M. Cesarano, Douglas J. Chumbley, and David L. Luck.

[1] Gregory M. Cesarano and Douglas J. Chumbley of Carlton Fields represent the defendants, the product manufacturers and distributor, in Farias. The district court’s order resulted in a defense summary judgment that is now on appeal to the United States Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.