Liability is intensely fact-specific, with issues including, but not limited to, the feasibility and difficulty of issuing warnings in the circumstances; the obviousness of the risk from actual use of the product; the user's knowledge of the product; and proximate cause. Recovery may properly be denied to a product user who was fully aware of the hazard through general knowledge, observation, or common sense. For that reason, courts could decide, as a matter of law, that a manufacturer's warning would have been superfluous given the injured party's actual knowledge of the specific hazard that caused the injury. However, even if a product user has some degree of knowledge of the potential hazards in the use of a product, summary judgment will not lie where reasonable minds might disagree as to the extent of that knowledge.
Vasquez v. Ridge Tool Pattern Co., NY Slip Op 03488 (1st Dep't May 31, 2022)
