Whether Plaintiffs raise a triable issue of fact in a products liability case, where Plaintiffs establish a product defect circumstantially, and Plaintiffs' experts refute Defendants' alternative explanation for the harming incident.

Yes. Although an alternative explanation must be refuted, it does not prevent Plaintiffs from establishing a product defect circumstantially.

Plaintiffs' decedent Sandra Speller was killed in a house fire originating in her kitchen. Plaintiffs brought suit against Defendants, Sears, Roebuck & Co. ("Sears"), alleging that defective wiring in a refrigerator manufactured by Sears was the cause of the fire. In support of their claim, Plaintiffs offered three expert opinions, all of which concluded that that the fire did not originate on the stove, and, circumstantially, that the fire started in the refrigerator due to a manufacturing flaw, namely faulty wiring. Defendants sought summary judgment, claiming that their suggestion of an alternative cause, a grease fire on the stove, required Plaintiffs to produce evidence of a specific defect, which they could not do in this case because the fire destroyed the section of the refrigerator that they alleged was defective. Supreme Court denied Defendants' request for summary judgment, holding that Plaintiffs' experts raised a triable issue of fact as to the cause of the fire. The Appellate Division reversed and granted the motion, holding that Defendants' evidence suggesting an alternative cause shifted the burden of proof to Plaintiffs to show the specific defect. The Court of Appeals reversed.

The Court noted that the Third Restatement of Torts: Product Liability § 3 (1998) establishes a two-pronged circumstantial inquiry in products liability. Product defects can be proved circumstantially, as long as the incident harming the plaintiff was (a) of a kind that ordinarily occurs as a result of product defect; and (b) not solely the result of causes other than the product defect. Defendants focused on the second prong with their alternative explanation, and therefore required Plaintiffs to exclude the stove as the origin of the fire. The Court of Appeals held that Plaintiffs' evidence, if accepted by a jury, would be sufficient to rebut Defendants' alternative explanation, thus satisfying the second prong of the circumstantial inquiry. In upholding the circumstantial approach, the Court also rejected the burden of proof shift argued for by the Appellate Division. The Court therefore reversed the order of the Appellate Division and denied Defendants' motion for summary judgment.