Your robot or battery from China caused damage: why you are liable

The case, in five lines

What is brought

Defence against the victim's claim, which pursues you as producer (arts. 135 and 138 TRLGDCU) or, if the damage is to a business's property, for fault (art. 1902 of the Código Civil, the Spanish Civil Code) or under the contract. Then, recourse against the Chinese manufacturer for what you paid (arts. 132 and 143(1) TRLGDCU) or a claim for lack of conformity (arts. 36, 39 and 74 of the Vienna Convention).

Before which court

The victim's claim, before the sección civil del Tribunal de Instancia (the civil section of the court of first instance), after the attempt at negotiation required by Ley Orgánica 1/2025 (Organic Law 1/2025). Recourse against the Chinese manufacturer, in the contractual forum: the agreed arbitral tribunal (CIETAC, the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission, or another institution) or the Spanish courts if there is a jurisdiction clause or, in contractual matters, if the obligation on which the claim is based was or should have been performed in Spain (art. 22 quinquies(a) of the Ley Orgánica del Poder Judicial, the Organic Law on the Judiciary). Whatever is won is enforced in China before an intermediate people's court: a judgment, under the 1992 Spain-China Treaty; an award made outside China, under the New York Convention.

Deadline

The victim, three years from the damage if the person liable is known (art. 143(1) TRLGDCU), subject to a ten-year long-stop from when the specific product was put into circulation (art. 144); for fault (art. 1902), one year from when the victim learned of it (art. 1968 of the Civil Code). You, against the others liable, one year from payment (art. 143(1)), which an out-of-court claim interrupts (art. 1973). Against the supplier, under the Convention, notice within a reasonable time and never later than two years from delivery (art. 39), unless there is a longer warranty or the seller knew of the defect and did not disclose it (art. 40).

Who can bring it

The injured person claims against the importer into the European Union, which is liable as producer alongside the Chinese manufacturer and jointly and severally with it (art. 132). If you bought from an importer or a distributor established in the Union, the importer is not you but whoever brought the product into the Union, and you are liable only if the producer cannot be identified or the product does not show the importer, and within three months you fail to identify the producer or whoever supplied it to you (art. 138(2)). Recourse is brought by whoever paid: against the other liable parties, such as the manufacturer, according to their share in causing the damage (art. 132), and, under the contract, against the seller named in it.

Financial risk

Liability to the victim requires no fault and cannot be limited by contract terms (art. 130): if the victim proves the defect, the damage and the causal link (art. 139) and you do not prove a defence under art. 140, you pay. The Chinese manufacturer may slip out of reach if the year from payment or the Convention's two years go by, and whatever you win against it has to be enforced in China, at a cost in time and money. Nobody can promise you that you will recover what you paid.

Why the victim comes after you and not the Chinese factory

The TRLGDCU (Spain's consolidated General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users) makes producers liable for damage caused by defects in what they manufacture or import (art. 135), and treats as producer, besides the manufacturer, the importer into the European Union of a finished product, of a component integrated into it or of a raw material (art. 138(1)). If the robot or the battery was made in China and you placed it on the European market, then as far as the victim is concerned you are the producer. The victim need not prove any fault on your part: the defect, the damage and the causal link between them are enough.

Those liable for the same damage are jointly and severally liable: the victim may claim the whole amount from you, and whoever pays then seeks recourse against the others according to their share (art. 132). If a third party contributed to the damage, your liability is not reduced, although you may claim its share from it (art. 133). That is why the victim picks the importer: you are in Spain, with insurance and assets here, while serving a Chinese factory through the formal channel of the 1965 Hague Service Convention takes around six months.

What nobody tells you is that leaving your name off the product does not protect you. If an imported product does not show the importer, the shop that sold it is liable unless, within three months, it identifies the producer or whoever supplied it (art. 138(2)); the Court of Justice requires it to do so on its own initiative and diligently (Case C-358/08, Aventis Pasteur, 2 December 2009). Your distributors will point to you as soon as a claim reaches them. And if you sell under your own brand, anyone who puts its name or trade mark on the product presents itself as the producer with nothing more required (Case C-264/21, Fennia, 7 July 2022). The same dispute seen from the victim's side is covered in "A defective product injured you: who is the one you sue".

Which losses fall under this regime and which go another way

The TRLGDCU regime covers personal injury, including death, suffered by anyone, including a worker employed by a company, and property damage only where it affects goods objectively intended for private use or consumption and mainly used that way by the injured person (art. 129(1)). A 500-euro deductible is subtracted from property damage, and there is an overall cap of 63,106,270.96 euros for death and injury caused by identical products with the same defect (art. 141).

If the battery sets fire to a company's warehouse or the robot wrecks an industrial customer's production line, that damage falls outside this regime. It is claimed under the contract, where there is one, or in tort under art. 1902 of the Civil Code, which requires fault or negligence and is time-barred one year after the injured party learned of it (art. 1968). The TRLGDCU actions do not exclude the others, contractual or non-contractual (art. 128): victims usually combine them, and each has its own deadline and its own burden of proof.

So, before negotiating, the claim is broken down by head of loss: the injuries, the private property and the business property, with the deductible applied to property damage and the legal route and deadline for each. A claim for 86,400 euros may contain one part for which you are liable without fault, another that requires negligence to be proved against you and another that is already time-barred. Paying it all as if it were strict liability gives money away and makes it harder to recover from the manufacturer later.

The importer's defences and proof of the cause

The producer escapes only by proving one of the grounds in art. 140: that it did not put the product into circulation; that, in the circumstances, it may be presumed that the defect did not exist when it did so; that the product was not manufactured for sale and that it did not import it in the course of a business; that the defect is due to mandatory rules; or that the state of scientific and technical knowledge did not allow the defect to be discovered. "I knew nothing" or "someone else made it" are not defences, and clauses excluding or limiting this liability are ineffective against the injured person (art. 130).

The real argument is usually a different one: whether there was a defect. A product is defective if it does not provide the safety a person is legitimately entitled to expect, taking into account its presentation, its reasonably foreseeable use and the time it was put into circulation, and it is defective in any event if it does not provide the safety normally offered by other units in the same series (art. 137). A battery that catches fire with its own charger in normal use is not defended in the same way as one that ignites on a third-party charger, after a fall or after someone opened it. In the field of medical devices, the Court of Justice allowed a product from a series with a potential defect to be classed as defective without checking that particular unit (Joined Cases C-503/13 and C-504/13, Boston Scientific, 5 March 2015): it is an argument the victim will try to extend to your batches.

That evidence is won with engineering. The firm works with partners with offices in China and with engineering experts in Spain and in China: here they examine the remains, the charger and the scene of the fire, and there the batch records, the cell supplier, the battery management system or the robot's firmware and the factory tests. At trial, the expert report is signed by an expert holding the relevant official qualification, under an oath of objectivity, and is filed with the defence (arts. 335, 336 and 340 of the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, Spain's Civil Procedure Act); what is gathered in China is the basis for that report, not a substitute for it. If the victim keeps the product, the court may allow you to examine it to prepare your expert evidence (art. 336(5)).

What changes with Directive 2024/2853 from December 2026

Directive (EU) 2024/2853 must be transposed by 9 December 2026 at the latest and repeals the 1985 Directive from that date (arts. 21 and 22), but it applies only to products placed on the market or put into service after 8 December 2026, under the corrigendum of 7 May 2026; earlier products remain under the current regime. As at 24 October 2026 there is no Spanish transposing law in the BOE (Spain's Official State Gazette). It is therefore worth being able to prove, batch by batch, when you placed on the market what you sell; the Court of Justice places putting into circulation at the moment the product leaves the manufacturing process and enters the marketing process (Case C-127/04, O'Byrne, 9 February 2006).

For anyone importing from China, the Directive confirms that, where the manufacturer is outside the Union, the importer, the authorised representative and, if there is neither, the fulfilment service provider are liable (art. 8(1)(c)). Software is a product (art. 4(1)), and there is no exemption for a later defect caused by software, by its updates or by the lack of updates needed for safety, while they are within the manufacturer's control (art. 11(2)). In assessing defectiveness, the product's ability to keep learning counts (art. 7(2)(c)), which goes to the heart of robots with artificial intelligence; their own obligations are explained in "You import AI robots from China: the AI Act and cybersecurity".

The most serious change is procedural. If the victim shows that the claim is plausible, the court will order the defendant to disclose the relevant evidence at its disposal, with measures to protect trade secrets (art. 9); if the defendant does not disclose it, defectiveness is presumed, and it is also presumed if the product fails to meet mandatory safety requirements or malfunctioned obviously in normal use (art. 10). The 500-euro deductible disappears, loss of data not used for professional purposes is compensated (art. 6), and the three-year period starts when the victim knows of the damage, the defect and the person liable, with extinction after ten years, or twenty-five if the injury is latent (arts. 16 and 17). Whatever you do not have documented from your Chinese manufacturer will count against you.

Recourse against the Chinese manufacturer: deadlines that run fast

Whoever pays the victim may seek recourse against the others liable, and that action is time-barred one year after the compensation is paid (art. 143(1)). Interruption is governed by the Civil Code (art. 143(2)): a written out-of-court claim with proof of receipt interrupts it (art. 1973), and so does the request to negotiate under Organic Law 1/2025 (art. 7(1)). Against a Chinese manufacturer, which law governs that recourse and where it is brought are the first things to be argued over, so that year must not be allowed to run.

The contractual route has its own clocks. Between a company in Spain and one in China the 1980 Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods applies, unless the contract excludes it: the seller is liable for a lack of conformity that existed when risk passed, even if it only becomes apparent later (art. 36), but you must give notice of it within a reasonable time after discovering it, specifying its nature, and you lose the right two years after the goods were handed over to you, unless there is a longer contractual warranty (art. 39) or the seller knew of the defect and did not disclose it (art. 40). What nobody tells you: that limit runs from when the goods were actually handed over to you, so a batch that left the factory twenty-six months ago may already be past it or about to be, and a twelve-month warranty gives you no extra time. Contractual damages reach what the seller foresaw or ought to have foreseen when contracting (art. 74). Note: the Convention does not apply to the seller's liability for death or personal injury caused by the goods (art. 5), and it is unsettled whether that reaches what you paid to an injured person; that is why the clause that settles it is the indemnity clause in the contract. Before a Spanish court and with no choice of law, what the Convention does not govern, such as limitation, is subject to Chinese law, which allows four years (art. 594 of the Chinese Civil Code).

The forum is set by the contract: the agreed arbitration, the Spanish courts if there is a jurisdiction clause, or the Chinese courts. Without a clause, the Spanish courts may also have jurisdiction if the obligation on which the claim is based was or should have been performed in Spain (art. 22 quinquies(a) of the Organic Law on the Judiciary). To sue in Spain, negotiation must be attempted first, even against a Chinese company; for arbitration, it need not. Winning is not collecting: a Spanish judgment is recognised and enforced in China under the 1992 Spain-China Treaty on judicial assistance, before an intermediate people's court and without review of the merits, and an award made outside China, under the New York Convention. Before the Chinese courts, a lawyer qualified in China acts, whom we coordinate from Spain with our partners there. Where it pays to litigate is covered in "You want to sue your Chinese supplier: arbitration or the courts?"; if the defect shows up before any damage is done, in "Your Chinese supplier delivers magnets or parts that are not as agreed".

Insurance, the authorities and the clauses that would have prevented it

Report the incident to your product liability insurer within the period set in the policy and before answering the victim, and check whether the policy bars you from admitting liability or settling without the insurer, whether it covers what you import from outside the Union and whether it includes recall, which is not always covered. The law allows the Government to set up compulsory insurance and a guarantee fund for this kind of damage (art. 131 TRLGDCU), but what you need to review now is your own policy.

A fire or an injury also opens the administrative front. If there is reason to believe the product presents a risk, the economic operator responsible in the Union must inform the market surveillance authorities and cooperate on corrective action (art. 4(3) of Regulation 2019/1020); for consumer products, the notification goes through the Safety Business Gateway portal (arts. 11 and 20 of Regulation 2023/988). For batteries, in addition, the importer puts its name and address on the battery and keeps the EU declaration of conformity for ten years (art. 41 of Regulation 2023/1542). If the authority orders you to withdraw or recall, the matter is the one covered in "You are ordered to withdraw robots or machines imported from China".

The clauses that would have changed this case are agreed before the order, and the Convention allows its effects to be varied (art. 6): an indemnity from the manufacturer against third-party claims for product defects, with its own period that does not lapse with the two years of art. 39 and runs to the ten years of art. 144; product liability insurance taken out by the manufacturer, with cover in the Union and a certificate in your favour; delivery of the technical documentation, the test reports (for lithium batteries, test 38.3 of the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria) and batch traceability; the right to pre-shipment inspection by our partners and engineering experts and to audit the factory; cooperation on, and the cost of, recalls; and a governing law and forum whose decision can be enforced in China. Against the victim, none of this releases you (art. 130); against the manufacturer, it decides everything.

How we run the case, step by step

1. 1

   Preserve the product and notify the insurer

   Do not repair, discard or hand the remains to the manufacturer: they are preserved with photographs, dates and a chain of custody, together with the charger and accessories. Notify your insurer within the period in the policy, and make no admission of liability without discussing it with the insurer.

2. 2

   Expert investigation of the cause in Spain and in China

   Our engineering experts examine the product and the scene in Spain; our partners with offices in China and the engineers there gather the batch records, the cell supplier, the firmware versions and the factory tests. On that basis, an expert with the relevant official qualification signs the report for trial (art. 340 of the Civil Procedure Act).

3. 3

   Establish who is who and which regime applies

   With the customs declaration, the invoice, the contract and the label, we establish whether you are the importer or a distributor (art. 138), when each batch was put into circulation (TRLGDCU or Directive 2024/2853), which losses are personal, private or business, and the deadline for each head of claim. If other users are at risk, notifying the authority cannot wait (art. 4(3) of Regulation 2019/1020).

4. 4

   Answer the victim

   The victim must attempt negotiation before suing (Organic Law 1/2025, arts. 3(1) and 5). Your reply, coordinated with the insurer, breaks down the heads of loss, applies the deductible and raises the defences in art. 140 or the absence of a defect (art. 137). If a claim is filed, the defence already includes the expert report or gives notice of it (arts. 336 and 337 of the Civil Procedure Act).

5. 5

   Put the Chinese manufacturer on notice now

   Without waiting for the end of the lawsuit: notice of the lack of conformity (art. 39 of the Vienna Convention), a request for the technical documentation and for details of its insurance, and a written claim with proof of receipt. That letter does not replace the recourse claim, whose year starts on the day you pay (art. 143(1)): once the compensation is paid, a further claim is made within that year, which interrupts it (art. 1973 of the Civil Code). If the forum is Spanish, it is also framed as a request to negotiate under Organic Law 1/2025.

6. 6

   Recover what you paid and protect future orders

   Once the compensation is paid, the year for recourse runs from that day (art. 143(1)): a claim or a request for arbitration in the contractual forum, and enforcement in China under the 1992 Treaty or, if the award was made outside China, under the New York Convention. And in future orders, an indemnity, insurance, documentation, pre-shipment inspection by our partners and engineers, and an enforceable forum. We draft them for you.

The law that applies

• Arts. 135 y 138 del TRLGDCU. Producers are liable for damage caused by defects in what they manufacture or import. The importer into the European Union of a finished product, an integrated component or a raw material is also a producer. If the producer cannot be identified, or the imported product does not show the importer, the supplier is liable unless it identifies them within three months. BOE-A-2007-20555
• Arts. 129, 140 y 141 del TRLGDCU. The regime covers personal injury and property damage to goods for private use or consumption. The producer is exempt only if it proves that it did not put the product into circulation, that the defect did not exist at that time, that the product was not made for sale and it was not acting in the course of a business, that the defect was due to mandatory rules or that the state of the art did not allow it to be discovered. A 500-euro deductible on property damage and an overall cap of 63,106,270.96 euros for death and injury from identical products with the same defect. BOE-A-2007-20555
• Arts. 132, 143 y 144 del TRLGDCU. Those liable for the same damage are jointly and severally liable, and whoever pays has recourse against the others according to their share. The victim's action is time-barred three years after the damage, if the person liable is known; the recourse action, one year after payment; interruption is governed by the Civil Code. Rights are extinguished ten years after the specific product was put into circulation, unless legal proceedings were brought earlier. BOE-A-2007-20555
• Arts. 2, 8 y 21 de la Directiva (UE) 2024/2853. It applies to products placed on the market or put into service after 8 December 2026 (date corrected on 7 May 2026); the 1985 Directive continues to apply to earlier ones. Where the manufacturer is outside the Union, the importer, the authorised representative and, if there is neither, the fulfilment service provider are liable; distributors only if they fail to identify an operator in the Union within one month. 32024L2853
• Arts. 9, 10 y 11 de la Directiva (UE) 2024/2853. The defendant must disclose relevant evidence if the claim is plausible, with protection for trade secrets. Defectiveness is presumed if it fails to disclose, if the product fails to meet mandatory safety requirements or if it malfunctions obviously in normal use, and causation if the damage is of a kind typically consistent with the defect. A later defect due to software, its updates or their absence within the manufacturer's control is no defence. 32024L2853
• Arts. 1902, 1968 y 1973 del Código Civil. Anyone who, by act or omission, causes damage to another through fault or negligence must make it good; that action is time-barred one year after the injured party learned of it. Limitation is interrupted, among other ways, by the creditor's out-of-court claim. BOE-A-1889-4763
• Arts. 335, 336 y 340 de la Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil. A party-appointed expert report is issued under oath or promise of objectivity and is filed with the claim or the defence, unless this is shown to be impossible. The expert must hold the official qualification for the subject and be a recognised expert. The court may allow the defendant to examine the relevant items and places to prepare its expert evidence. BOE-A-2000-323
• Arts. 36, 39 y 40 de la Convención de Viena de 1980. The seller is liable for any lack of conformity existing when risk passes, even if it becomes apparent later. The buyer loses the right if it does not give notice within a reasonable time, specifying its nature, and in any event two years after the goods were handed over, unless there is a longer contractual warranty. The seller cannot rely on those periods if it knew or could not have been unaware of the defect and did not disclose it. BOE-A-1991-2552

Each article checked against the consolidated text published in the BOE (the Spanish official gazette).

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