Court:
OGH 3. 2. 1994 8 Ob 536/93 SZ 67/22 = JBl 1994, 477 = EvBl 1994/159 = ecolex 1994, 384
Topics:
Definition of "product" according to the PHG
Articles:
§ 4, PHG
Facts:
The plaintiff had bought a car. The water tube at the rear end of car's engine disrupted and led to an engine failure. The plaintiff claimed compensation for the damage caused (minus the 500 Euro as percentage share according to § 2 PHG). The defendant, importer of the car, claimed that liability was excluded because the defective product itself had been damaged.
Legal questions:
Can the producer of a component part be held liable for damages caused to the product by the component part itself?
Decision:
The plaintiff stated that the component part (water tube) was defective and caused damage to property but not to the product (water tube) itself. Instead, the damage was inflicted on the finished product (entire car). He claimed that the importer of the component part was liable according to the § 1 Abs 1 PHG and consequently the importer of the component part and the importer of the finished product were held to be solidarily liable.
There are different legal opinions regarding the problem of whether the producer of a component part can be held liable for damages caused by this part itself. One legal opinion[31] holds that the finished product has to be considered as a product that is different from the defective component part and therefore the producer of the component part can be held liable according to the PHG. Following this opinion, it has to be distinguished between cases in which the claim is brought against the producer of the finished product and cases in which it is brought against the producer of the component part. The producer of the finished product cannot be held liable according to the PHG for damages to the finished product. The producer of the component part on the other hand can be held liable for damages to the finished product if his component part caused the damage. According to another legal opinion[32] this way of distinguishing between whom the claim is brought against leads to objectively unfounded inequality. As an example for the unjustifiable inequality resulting from that opinion the following example is given: a consumer buys two cars form the same producer. The producer has produced all parts of the first car himself and bought all the component parts for manufacturing the second car. Liability without fault should not depend upon who manufactured the product but on the defect of the product itself. The producer of the component part is held liable according to the PHG only for damage to property caused by the finished product which was rendered defective by a defective component part.
Compensation for the defective product itself can be granted only if the product was acquired as an independent product. In the case at hand the tube was not acquired as an independent product and therefore the producer's liability for the defective tube was excluded. Furthermore the importer of the component part of the product cannot be held liable for damage caused by his product to the car.
31. The OGH refers mainly to Sack (WBl 1989, 8 and JBl 1989, 695, 697f).
32. The OGH refers to Kresbach (ecolex 1990, 469ff).
