A way courts and experts judge whether a product's design is unreasonably dangerous by weighing its risks against its usefulness and the feasibility of a safer design.

That sounds simple, but the common bad advice is that any product causing a serious injury must be "defective." Not necessarily. A table saw, SUV, ladder, or prescription drug can be dangerous and still not be legally defective if its benefits outweigh the risks and there was no practical safer design at the time. On the other hand, manufacturers often hide behind "all products have risks," which also misses the point. The real question is whether the danger was excessive in light of the product's purpose, the likelihood and severity of harm, the cost of a safer alternative, and whether that alternative would have reduced the injury without ruining the product.

In an injury claim, the risk-utility test often decides whether a design defect case survives or falls apart. It usually turns on technical proof: crash data, testing, human factors, warnings, and whether a reasonable alternative design existed. In Connecticut, product cases are governed by the Connecticut Product Liability Act, Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 52-572m to 52-572r, and the state's approach to design-defect claims was shaped by Izzarelli v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (2012) and Bifolck v. Philip Morris, Inc. (2016). Fault can matter too: under Connecticut's modified comparative fault rule, recovery is barred if the injured person is more than 50% at fault.