On September 4, 2025, the NAM filed an amicus letter in support of a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of California asking the court to reject a liability theory that would require manufacturers to incorporate—and consumers to purchase—products with advanced safety technologies, driving up manufacturing and retail prices across the board. In Ortiz v. Daimler Trucks North America, LLC, the appeals court held that Daimler owed (and violated) a duty to include the latest advanced braking equipment in all truck models. This ruling follows the 2024 decision in Gilead Tenofovir Cases, in which a different California appeals court held that drugmakers have a tort duty to immediately commercialize drugs with different risk profiles than their existing offerings. The NAM has asked the state’s high court to consider the case on the merits as a companion to Gilead, which is currently under the court’s review. In Gilead, the NAM filed an amicus brief explaining that this theory could be repurposed against any manufacturer and would open the floodgates of litigation to enterprising plaintiffs’ lawyers.
In Ortiz, the NAM reiterated these concerns in its brief and argued that imposing a tort duty on manufacturers to commercialize new safety-related innovations will (1) drive up the price of manufacturing and selling products in every industry; (2) allow jurors—rather than qualified safety regulators—to decide whether manufacturers should have made their products safer, in spite of the status of any regulatory review process; and (3) deprive consumers of their choice of products, models, and spending limits in the marketplace.