The Subrogation Strategist

In Universal Property & Casualty Ins. Co. v. Amazon.com Services, LLC, No. 24-6195, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130880 (Universal Property), Amazon.com Services, LLC (Amazon) argued that the jury should reduce the plaintiff’s recovery against Amazon by apportioning fault to non-party entities upstream from Amazon in the chain of distribution. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida (District Court) rejected Amazon’s argument.

In Universal Property, the property insurer brought a products liability action against Amazon after an electric bicycle and battery purchased through Amazon ignited while charging. The insurer brought a strict product liability claim against Amazon on the basis that Amazon is within the distribution chain for the defective product. Before trial, the plaintiff moved for a determination that fault could not be apportioned with absent entities in the distribution chain, including the manufacturer. The District Court construed the pretrial motion as a motion in limine to exclude evidence and argument at trial that the jury should apportion fault to the manufacturer and other non-party entities in the distribution chain. 

The District Court found it “unlikely that it would allow the jury instructions and verdict form to ‘apportion fault’ to non-party entities upstream from Amazon in the chain of distribution to reduce the plaintiff’s recovery against . . . Amazon in this strict products liability action.” The court reasoned that the purpose of strict products liability claims is to impose liability without regard to fault and that apportioning fault among non-parties would turn that rationale on its head.

The court disagreed with Amazon that the Florida legislature intended to overrule the Florida Supreme Court’s adoption of the strict liability doctrine in West v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., Inc., 336 So. 2d 80 (Fla. 1976), when the legislature enacted Fla. Stat. § 768.81. Although Fla. Stat. § 768.81 introduced the apportionment of fault in products liability actions, the statute is limited to crashworthiness (or “enhanced injury”) cases, where the issue is not whether a product defect caused the accident, but whether a product defect worsened the injuries arising from the accident. In those types of enhanced injury cases, a jury may apportion fault between the party that caused the underlying injury and the defendant who sold the product that made those injuries worse. In contrast, Universal Property contained no allegation that the product sold on Amazon worsened the fire, but rather, that the product actually caused the fire. 

Consequently, the court held that Amazon should not be allowed to shift fault at trial.  Instead, the court indicated that Amazon’s proper recourse would be an indemnification action against the entities upstream from it in the distribution chain of the defective product. Subrogation professionals practicing in Florida should be aware of this nuance: they cannot attribute fault upstream in strict liability cases, to others in the distribution chain, unless they are pursuing an “enhanced injury” case.