Products liability doctrine holds a manufacturer, or other party involved in selling a product, strictly liable when an article, placed into the market with knowledge that it is to be used without inspection for defects, proves to have a defect that causes a personal injury. Consumers who are injured because of a fault with a product that the consumers had no ability to protect themselves against may recover against the manufacturer under a theory of products liability.
Lancaster is the eighth-largest city in Los Angeles County, California and the 9th fastest growing city in the United States. Lancaster is located approximately 70 miles (112.5 km) north (by road travel) of the city of Los Angeles in Southern California's Antelope Valley. It is separated from the Los Angeles Basin by the San Gabriel Mountain Range to the south and from Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley by the Tehachapi Mountain Range to the north. The population of Lancaster has grown from 37,000 residents at the time of incorporation in 1977, to an estimated 145,074 residents in 2009, and is the second-largest city on the California side of the Mojave Desert. As of the 2009 population estimate, the Palmdale / Lancaster, CA Urbanized Area (a US Census Bureau defined term) has a population of 476,845.