Warranties

Brief History of Warranties

The freedom to contract as desired was a much protected legal principle under early common law, and still is in many ways. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, was a natural consequence of such a principle since each party was entitled to enter into a contract as they chose. However, the freedom was not so absolute [Page 2206]as to ignore how fraud or duress would impair said freedom and the resultant contract. In that same vein, failure to satisfy a promise about the good as to quality or type would also invalidate a contract as failing to meet its warranty. But it had to be a very specific warranty and expressly communicated as being a warranty to qualify. Not until the late 1800s was the warranty doctrine expanded to include positive affirmations or representations about the character or quality of an article sold. The common law continued to develop warranty law so that an implied warranty of safety for food and drink began in the early 1900s and was then expanded to include consumer products in the 1960s.

Originally, warranties also contained a privity requirement (i.e., any duties or protections imposed by warranty or other legal doctrine extended only to those directly involved in the sales transaction). To protect the consumer, the privity requirement was slowly reduced and then completely discarded as industrialized society, and its chain of distribution caused the relationship between manufacturer and the ultimate consumer to become more distant and thus devoid of the built-in safeguards of face-to-face contracts. Thus, manufacturers, sellers, and lessors became responsible for the ultimate consumer under warranty, negligence, and strict liability theories for the quality and safety of their goods and services. Horizontal privity was also relaxed so as to extend warranty coverage to the buyer's family, household, guests, and even to bystanders in some states.

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