Convention on the Law Applicable to Products Liability

The Convention on the Law Applicable to Products Liability is a convention concluded in 1971 within the framework of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), which governs the law that should be applied to products liability cases. It entered into force in 1973 and as of 2020, 11 countries are party to it.

Scope of application
The convention exclusively determines the law that applies between the manufacturer or distributor of a product and the person(s) that have suffered damage. It thus does not handle which court has jurisdiction, or whether a judicial decision should be recognized.

The convention does not apply between the seller that directly sold the product to the person suffering the damage. The exclusion was chosen as the negotiators deemed the relationship between those two parties already clear enough, and would hamper wide adoption of the convention.

The products the convention applies to "shall include natural and industrial products, whether raw or manufactured and whether movable or immovable", and thus has a wide meaning. Member states can decide to exclude agricultural products from the scope of the convention (Article 16), as Spain did.

Applicable law
The convention's main articles determining which law should be applied are Articles 4 and (if that doesn't result in an applicable law) Article 5. They are summarized below: