자동차 급발진 사고와 결함 및 인과관계의 추정

To understand the main issues in recent product liability cases involving alleged sudden unintended acceleration, this study has extracted legal issues worthy of further investigation from publicly available court decisions of sudden unintended acceleration product liability cases. The relaxation of the burden of proof in product liability has been a major issue in every product liability case involving sudden unintended acceleration over the last ten years. This paper identified three major issues: first, the identification of a specific defect; next, the circumstances that should be considered in the normal use and exclusive control tests; finally, whether there is a substantial difference between the existing case law on the relaxation of the burden of proof for product liability and the newly enacted Article 3(2) of the Product Liability Act. Since the relaxation of the burden of proof in product liability is known to derive from the res ipsa loquitur doctrine or malfunction theory from the United States, this paper examines these issues with extensive reference to discussions in both the United States and Korea.