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.
Grand Isle is a town in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, located on a barrier island of the same name. The island is at the mouth of Barataria Bay where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. As of the 2000 census, the town population was 1,541; during summers, the population has increased to over 20,000. Grand Isle is part of the New Orleans–Metairie–Kenner Metropolitan Statistical Area. Grand Isle's only land connection to the mainland is via an automobile causeway bridge, near the west end of the island, which connects it to southern Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. To reach the rest of Jefferson Parish by roadway, one has to travel through two different parishes through a total distance of about 95 miles (153 km).