| Venue: | MA SC |
| Facts: | Vassallo's silicone gel breast implants caused her injury. |
| Posture: | Verdict for the plaintiff at trial, on theories both of negligence and implied warranty of merchantability. The negligence verdict is upheld on appeal. |
| Issue: | The court decides to address the implied warranty claim, as a tangent. |
| Holding: | The implied warranty verdict should be revised, but the negligence verdict makes that moot. Affirmed. |
| Rule: | A defendant will not be held liable on an implied warranty of merchantability for failure to warn or provide instructions about risks that were not reasonably foreseeable at the time of sale, and could not have been discovered by way of reasonable testing. |
| Reasoning: | The goal of the law is to induce conduct that is capable of being performed. If we impose liability for risks that are not capable of being known, we're not really furthering that interest. |
| Dicta: | |