Market Share Liability in Maryland

 

In the landmark case of Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories that every law student read in Torts, California enunciated its doctrine of market share liability. The theory is that companies should be obligated to pay according to how much market share they had when product identifcation cannot be established.

Maryland courts have explictly rejected this doctrine, requring plaintiffs' lawyer in pharmaceutical cases to prove which defendant manufactured the product that caused the injury. Most jurisdictions seems to adopt this approach or have tightly confined Sindell to its facts. The Court of Appeals of Maryland underscored its thoughts on market share liability in Maryland most recently in Reiter v. ACandS, 179 Md. App. 645 (2008).