A postal worker picks up a leaking bottle of drain cleaner stuck on a conveyor belt and suffers severe chemical burns.  The product was sold through an online marketplace and was made by a manufacturer that sells only bulk cases to hardware distributors.  This wayward bottle was shipped in the US Mail illegally by someone, but we are not sure exactly who. 

Who, if anyone, owed our unfortunate postal worker a duty of care?  According to Rimel v. Alabama Janitorial & Paper Supply, LLC, No. 23-cv-2020, 2026 WL 2593320 (W.D. Pa. Sept. 2, 2026), whoever shipped the bottle to the plaintiff surely owed her a duty of care, and that may or may not have been Alabama Janitorial. 

The online marketplace, however, owed no duty at all, as it was a mere e-commerce platform acting as an intermediary for a third-party vendor.

You might be thinking, great, but why do we care?  We care because pharmaceutical products are purchased and shipped though e-commerce platforms in increasing numbers, and we know that all pharmaceutical products have both benefits and risks.  It is not too far outside the realm of possibility that someone experiencing an alleged pharmaceutical side effect could look to an online marketplace for compensation.

The Rimel order is as broad a statement on this issue as we have seen, and the district court there convincingly ruled that an online marketplace owes no duty of care to purchasers of products from third-party vendors.  The evidence showed that the e-commerce website notified the seller of the purchase, processed payment, and updated the buyer on order status.  That’s all.  It never possessed, warehoused, or shipped the bottle.  The district court observed that Pennsylvania’s highest court has not addressed marketplace liability.  The Third Circuit certified the question to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Oberdorf v. Amazon.com Inc., 818 F. App’x 138 (3d Cir. 2020), but the case settled before the Supreme Court ruled.

Filling that gap, the district court relied on a “growing consensus” of federal decisions.  First among them was Fike v. Global Pharma Healthcare Private, Ltd., 741 F. Supp. 3d 265 (E.D. Pa. 2024), which we discussed here.  That case applied Pennsylvania’s five-factor duty test to find that online “middlemen” owed no duty.  Other cited cases ruled the same way—invoking the rationale that online marketplaces did not make, sell, or distribute defective products.  They also owed no duty to warn under Section 388 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts since that provision applies to product suppliers, which an online marketplace is not.  In the final analysis, none of these courts was willing to create a duty to control the actions of others or warn of dangers created by third parties. 

The district court in Rimel thus announced a broad rule:  “As a general matter, the Court holds that e-commerce platforms . . . do not owe any duty of care relating to products sold by third-party vendors on their websites.”  It grounded that holding in the Pennsylvania principle that “there is no duty to control the conduct of a third party to protect another from harm,” absent a recognized special relationship, citing Ritz v. Ramsay, 305 A.3d 1056, 1061 (Pa. Super. 2023). Finding no such relationship, the district court granted summary judgment for the defendant e-commerce website.

The district court granted summary judgment for the product manufacturer too, since the plaintiff did not claim any negligence in connection with the product itself—only its shipping.  It was undisputed that the product manufacturer did not ship the offending bottle though the US Mail.  That act occurred downstream, leaving no evidence in the record to hold the product manufacturer in the case. 

But who shipped the bottle?  We may never know, but Alabama Janitorial’s owner submitted a declaration stating that they did not ship this product to this plaintiff, so they should get summary judgment, too.  That declaration did not carry the day because there was evidence going the other way.  Because “the veracity of representations . . . is a quintessential jury issue,” this defendant’s motion was denied. 

The opinion offers a categorical no-duty holding under Pennsylvania law for online platforms that neither possess nor ship third-party goods.  It is not an opinion from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but it flows with a building weight of authority, and it strengthens a marketplace’s defense in Pennsylvania federal courts for sure.