Rather than focus on the behavior of the manufacturer (as in negligence), strict liability claims focus on the product itself. Under strict liability, the manufacturer is liable if the product is defective, even if the manufacturer was not negligent in making that product defective.

No matter which theory is used in a failure-to-warn defect case, proximate cause is still a critical component that must be proven in all products liability suits, including failure-to-warn defect cases.12 Plaintiffs must demonstrate that (1) the defendant manufacturer, supplier, or seller knew or should have known of the dangers related to the product’s intended use; (2) the product’s user/consumer was reasonably unaware of these dangers; (3) the defendant manufacturer, supplier, or seller failed to exercise reasonable care to notify the user/consumer of the product’s unsafe condition or the facts which make the product prone to be dangerous; and (4) the risk and degree of harm was large enough to justify that a warning should have been provided.13 Moreover, to win a failure-to-warn defect case, plaintiffs must also convince the fact-finder that heeding the warning would have prevented the injury.14 Accordingly, failure-to-warn defect cases may be predicated on “(1) the absence of a warning, (2) the inadequacy of the warning given, or (3) the absence or inadequacy of instructions in the safe use of the product.”15

The US regulatory environment, you seem to think, is only there to "protect" us from evil business. Its actually there now pretty much to FUND government first, protect you second...and is at the point in places like CA where it is actually actively hostile to manufacturing.

[...]

That's my daughter swimming in the River Amstel. Inside city limits. How clean is the water? Well, I don't really know, which is why, for the first few days we were staying on our friend's houseboat, I didn't let her swim. Even though all the people on the other houseboats, and their kids, were doing it. Then a close friend came over with her eight-year-old son, who insisted on swimming, and it just became impractical to stop them. So what the heck. In fact, I'd tried to look up the official position on this question, and found that the government advises against swimming in rivers anywhere in the Netherlands, because of boat traffic and water current issues. But the thing is, as long as you don't do something gratuitously stupid or make a flagrant nuisance of yourself, nobody's going to stop you.

If I'd tried letting my daughter do this in, say, the Potomac River in Washington, DC, I would have likely been arrested. The reason you can do it in the Netherlands is that if anybody tried to sue the city of Amsterdam because they or their child had been injured while swimming in the river, the suit would almost certainly be dismissed. (One woman is in fact suing the city because her 19-year-old son drowned at an unofficial beach in 2004, but the issue is that it was a popular beach with hundreds of bathers and fast-food shacks that the city had allowed to operate for years without any official lifeguards or warning signs. Nevertheless, her suit was rejected by the Dutch courts; she's now appealing to the European Court in Strasbourg. This is the exception that proves the rule: it's much harder to win such a suit in the Netherlands than in the United States.) Essentially, you still have the freedom to swim in the river in Amsterdam because people assume you have the common sense to avoid stupid behaviour, like diving in when you don't know what's underneath, or not keeping to the sides of the river during barge traffic hours. And if you don't, it's nobody's fault but your own.

But there's another reason why I can let my daughter swim in the Amstel, and that is that I'm pretty sure that in a well-regulated country like the Netherlands, the water is reasonably free of heavy pollutants and raw sewage. (I would not, for example, let her swim in the Mekong.) This, I think, outlines a useful distinction between different kinds of regulation. I am perfectly capable of assessing for myself the risks of swimming across a small pond in Massachusetts, or the risks of swimming in the Amstel when lots of boat traffic is around. I don't need regulations to protect me; I have common sense. What I can't assess for myself is the risk that the water is contaminated by raw sewage. For that, I need a regulatory agency that stops households and businesses from polluting the river. To generalise: for risks I can assess myself, I don't want regulations that prevent me from doing as I please just because I might end up suing the government. For risks I can't assess myself, I do want regulations that give me the confidence to do as I please. One kind of regulation stops me from swimming in a pond in Massachusetts. The other kind lets me swim in a river in the Netherlands. One kind of regulation makes me less free. The other kind makes me freer.

I'm not saying the Netherlands has struck the right balance, overall, between freedom and regulation. On the commercial side, the Dutch feel themselves to be heavily over-regulated. But I do think the comparison helps to identify how regulation and freedom interact. And to pull back one more level, I think another thing that makes people feel freer to do things like swim in a river is the confidence that if anything goes wrong, they have health insurance. At that point you start to get into a broader discussion about the differences between what liberals and libertarians mean when they talk about being free.

that shows that, DESPITE all of those regulations, the Potomac is still unsafe after a rainstorm due to problems with the GOVERNMENT utilities and failing infrastructure. Sure you want to use that to counter my point?