Products liability in the digital age entails reckoning with the transformative shift away from in-person purchases at brick-and-mortar stores to digital purchases from e-commerce platforms. The epochal rise of the online storefront has vastly expanded the prevalence of direct-to-consumer sales, implicating complex questions of how liability rules should respond when those consumers are harmed by the products they buy, especially in this age of internat ional e -commerce and cross-border sales.

Prof. Sharkey will develop her thoughts on the theoretical and conceptual basis for holding online platforms liable. Thereby, she will emphasize the role of tort law (“Deliktsrecht”) as a “transitional” mechanism to regulate in areas of great uncertainty. She will then distinguish between different stages of the development of products liability over time and discuss the notion of platforms as “cheapest cost avoiders”.

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