Question

Implied Warranty of Merchantability

Review the print lecture and reading regarding the Implied Warranty of Merchantability and read this hypothetical situation:

Tasha buys a carton of Camel cigarettes. She has been a loyal consumer of Camel for over 10 years. Tasha is diagnosed with lung cancer, and her doctor believes her illness is linked to her use of cigarettes.

Tasha claims that Camel cigarettes are defective and that Camel breached the implied warranty of merchantability it owed her. Does Tasha have a case?

Answer 1

An implied warranty for merchantability guarantees that a product will work as expected.

In this case, cigarettes are designed to work in some way. That way is implicit. It is implicit for all the products.

The implicit way is the usual purpose of the product which in this case is cigarettes.

Now, what do you think is the usual purpose of cigarettes?

Tricky question.

Cigarette manufacturers have described cigarettes as a drug administration system for the delivery of nicotine in acceptable and attractive form.

Now, manufacturers also mentions the amount of nicotine and tar a cigarette contains.

In this case, as per the implied warranty for merchantability there is no breach that happened here.

Hence, Tasha does not have a case.