Product Warranty Disclaimers -- Do They Mean Anything?

The next time you buy something in a store or order an item online, take a look at the fine print that accompanies the item. If you’re purchasing something in a store, the fine print will be on the product’s packaging or label. The fine print might also be in the instruction or warranty manual that comes with the product. If you’re buying an item online, the fine print will likely appear at some point during the sales process and may also accompany the product that you ordered, if the product’s something physical. Few people read or even notice that fine print, but it can become very important if a legal claim arises over the product’s quality or performance.

The most crucial part of the product’s fine print concerns the product’s warranties. Most manufacturers include some sort of express warranty coverage with their products. The warranty language will state the various types of product issues that the warranty covers. It’ll identify the remedies available for any such issues. And it’ll describe the types of product issues that the warranty doesn’t cover.

The product’s express warranty language is important because of the impact it may have on other legal claims, outside of the express warranty, that might be available against the manufacturer if the product fails to perform as expected. The most common such claim is for “breach of implied warranty.” The law recognizes different types of implied warranty claims. Implied warranty claims might give a dissatisfied product purchaser greater claims or more remedies against the manufacturer than the manufacturer’s express warranty allows. But all manufacturer express warranties try to limit or eliminate such implied warranty claims.

Through their express warranties’ language, manufactures try to affect implied warranty claims in two ways. First, they impose “limitation of remedy” provisions, which limit the type of remedy available for implied warranty claims. Second, they also include “warranty disclaimers,” which completely eliminate the manufacturer’s potential exposure to implied warranty claims. The end result is that, through such language, manufacturers try to eviscerate product purchasers’ legal rights to the barest possible minimum, usually repair or replacement of defective parts or products for a limited time after purchase.

Because of the significant limitations that such language places on consumers’ legal rights, there are a number of arguments available to try to get around the limitation of remedies and warranty disclaimer provisions. One common method is to argue that the purchaser wasn’t aware of or shown the language until after the sale. Another primary challenge is that the language was not conspicuous.

The general rule is that warranty limitation and disclaimer language is ineffective if the buyer does not have an opportunity to review it before the sale. In that sense, it’s not something that the buyer bargained for, so it doesn’t count. But remember — This rule simply requires that the buyer have a chance to read the language before the purchase; the buyer cannot avoid the language merely by claiming that it wasn’t read after it was made available before the sale. So the warranty limitations and disclaimer language that appears on every product you buy in a store or that pops up on your screen before an online purchase is effective because you have a chance to read the language and decline the purchase if you don’t like the limitations and disclaimers.

Warranty limitation and disclaimer language must also be conspicuous. It can’t be buried in all other kinds of fine print. In evaluating conspicuousness, courts will consider things such as the language’s heading, color, font style, font size, and placement among any other language around the warranty limitations and disclaimers. Please note that, although this is a common argument, it fails more often than it succeeds. Courts rarely ignore warranty limitation and disclaimer language on the grounds that it wasn’t conspicuous enough.

All of this may seem like a minor issue in the context of small, less expensive purchases. But warranty limitations and disclaimer language can become very important if the product at issue is a vehicle, expensive equipment, or expensive electronics. Given the number of lawsuits over such items that are dismissed or severely limited by warranty limitation and disclaimer language each year, meaning that a consumer was left with either no legal remedy or a dissatisfactory remedy after filing suit, it behooves purchasers of expensive products to be aware of what they’re agreeing to before they commit to the purchase.