Takeaway
In short, this case holds that a book's ideas are not strict-liability products, and an ordinary publisher is not required to guarantee, investigate, or warn about the accuracy of its informational content.
Wilhelm Winter and Cynthia Zheng bought The Encyclopedia of Mushrooms to help them identify and prepare wild mushrooms. The book, written by British authors and first published in Britain, was purchased in finished form by G.P. Putnam's Sons for distribution in the United States. Putnam neither wrote nor edited it.
In 1988, the plaintiffs used the book while mushroom hunting and ate mushrooms they believed were safe. They became critically ill and each required a liver transplant. They alleged that the book gave erroneous and misleading information about identifying deadly mushrooms.
The plaintiffs sued Putnam under products-liability, warranty, negligence, negligent-misrepresentation, and false-representation theories. Applying California law in diversity, the district court granted summary judgment to Putnam, holding that a book's informational content is not a product for strict-liability purposes and that a publisher has no general duty to verify the accuracy of the text it publishes. The Ninth Circuit affirmed.
Issue #1
Whether the ideas and information contained in a reference book are a "product" subject to strict products liability.
Holding
No. Although a book's physical form may be a product, its ideas and expression are not products for purposes of strict liability.
Reasoning
The court separated a book into its physical object—the paper, binding, and printing—and its intangible contents—the ideas and expression conveyed by the text. Products-liability doctrine is directed toward tangible articles, as illustrated by Restatement (Second) of Torts section 402A's examples of automobiles, tires, appliances, tools, and insecticides. Nothing in that doctrine indicated that it should extend to ideas conveyed through words.
Strict liability serves purposes suited to defective physical products: spreading the costs of dangerous defects, promoting accident prevention, and relieving consumers of the often difficult burden of proving a manufacturer's fault. Those purposes do not translate neatly to books and ideas, because imposing liability without fault for informational errors would create substantially different social costs.
The court stressed that free exchange of ideas has special value. If authors and publishers faced strict liability whenever instructional information contributed to physical injury, they could be deterred from publishing guidance on subjects ranging from tree cutting and beekeeping to exercise and other ordinary activities. The court declined to draw an unstable line between actionable practical instructions and protected ideas more generally.
Aeronautical charts did not require a different result. Such charts are highly technical, graphical tools that function more like a compass or other navigational instrument; they are designed to provide precise mechanical or geographic data for use in navigation. The mushroom encyclopedia, by contrast, was analogous to a book explaining how to use such a tool: it conveyed thought and expression rather than functioning as the technical instrument itself.
For the same reason, the plaintiffs could not rely on Restatement section 402B, which imposes strict liability for certain false representations about the character or quality of chattels. Extending that strict-liability rule to a book's informational content would present the same problem as extending section 402A.
Issue #2
Whether Putnam could be liable for breach of warranty, false representation, or negligent misrepresentation merely because it distributed an inaccurate book.
Holding
No. A publisher that simply distributes a book does not thereby guarantee the accuracy of its author's factual statements.
Reasoning
The court treated the plaintiffs' non-negligence theories as dependent on an unsupported premise: that Putnam guaranteed the truth of the book's contents. Putnam purchased and distributed a finished book but did not write, edit, or independently endorse its factual accuracy. That ordinary publishing role did not create a warranty or comparable assurance to readers.
A publisher could voluntarily assume greater responsibility, such as by independently examining a product and expressly guaranteeing it. But Putnam made no undertaking of that sort. Without a special assurance, the plaintiffs had no basis to transform the publisher into a guarantor of all information contained in the book.
Issue #3
Whether a book publisher has a duty to investigate a book's factual accuracy or to warn readers that its information may be incomplete or unverified.
Holding
No. Putnam had no general duty to investigate the encyclopedia's accuracy, and the proposed warnings would improperly impose the same rejected duty.
Reasoning
An actionable negligence claim requires a legal duty of due care. The court found no duty inherent in the publisher's role requiring it to independently investigate the accuracy of every factual assertion in a work it publishes. The authorities uniformly declined to impose such a duty on publishers of informational works.
First Amendment values reinforced that conclusion. Requiring publishers to verify the accuracy of published ideas and information would burden the circulation of speech and knowledge, with potentially serious effects on the willingness to publish. The court therefore declined to create a negligence duty based on the ordinary act of publishing a book.
The plaintiffs' proposed warning that the book might be incomplete or unreliable would require Putnam first to determine what content was inaccurate or inadequately supported. That would force the publisher to conduct the very investigation the court held it had no duty to undertake. A general disclaimer that Putnam had not verified the text was also unnecessary because Putnam had no duty to guarantee accuracy in the first place.