Hernandez v. Tokai Corp.

Two-year-old Ruben Hernandez was severely burned when his older sister took a disposable butane lighter from their mother Gloria Hernandez's (plaintiff) purse and started a fire. Hernandez sued the lighter's manufacturer, Tokai Corporation (Tokai) (defendant), and its distributor, claiming the lighter was defectively designed because it lacked a child-resistant safety mechanism, even though Tokai conceded such mechanisms were available at nominal cost when the lighter was made. Tokai moved for summary judgment, arguing it had no duty to childproof a product against unintended users given the lighter's obvious dangers, and that it provided warnings against child access; the district court granted summary judgment, and the court of appeals certified the design-defect question to the Texas Supreme Court.