제조물책임법상 ‘개발위험의 항변’의 필요성 여부에 관한 소고

Plea of Development Risk in Product Liability Law

After being enacted in 2002, Product Liability Law has been enforced for 12 years until now without amendment. Though there have been few lawsuits which were brought an action for damages against manufacturer, a lot of cases happened actually. In connection with the plea of Development Risk, there is an debate on the level of manufacture’s scientific and technical knowledge. While the Product Liability Law based on manufacturer’s liability without fault, the Plea of Development Risk and the Liability without Fault is incompatible. In a leading cases on the level of scientific and technical knowledge, the court decided that “in order to have a defence under Article 7(e) of the Directive, the producer of a defective product must prove that the objective state of scientific and technical knowledge, including the most advanced level of such knowledge, at the time when the product in question was put into circulation was not such as to enable the existence of the defect to be discovered.” In this paper, the author described the EC Directives and the history of accepting the Plea of Development Risk in the Directives(Ⅱ), and then the application of the Plea of Development Risk in Korean Product Liability Law(Ⅲ). Finally, the author suggest that the Plea of Development Risk is no longer useful, because it is out of use owing to the court’s decision as stated above.