In particular, the court ruled that Amazon could be held liable in the lawsuit filed by Angela Bolger, who suffered severe burns when a battery of Lenoge Technology HK, which she acquired on the company’s trading platform, exploded.
The representative of “Amazon” tried to prove in court that his company could not be held responsible for the damage to the health of the plaintiff, since it did not manufacture or sell these batteries. But the court ruled that the company’s involvement in purchasing the product “significantly exceeds what we see on trading platforms such as the eBay auction site.” The court ruling notes that the company stored these batteries in its warehouses, received payments for them and delivered them to customers in its original packaging.
Amazon, which generates up to 60% of its revenue from sales of third-party goods on its online platform, has repeatedly won such claims and evaded liability for defective goods in the past. However, this time the company lost, and this court order, according to the plaintiff’s lawyer, “may help other buyers of goods over the Internet who received defective products.”