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Call him a shopkeeper or a retailer, trader or a vendor, he is the most important link between the consumer and the producer. In fact to the consumer, it is he, the dealer, who sells the goods and it is, therefore, only logical that he should be held accountable if something were to go wrong with the product. Dealers, of course, do not share this sentiment. They, it seems, want the advantages that go with the dealership, without the responsibilities. Initially, when consumers started hauling them up before the consumer courts, they argued that it was the manufacturer and the manufacturer alone who is answerable to consumers. The consumer courts would have none of it and said both the dealer and the manufacturer were equally culpable. But a recent order of the consumer court has taken the liability of the dealer even further—-in fact it has held the dealer fully accountable for product quality. Lest manufacturers get the wrong impression, let me quickly clarify—-the apex consumer court’s order does not let the manufacturers off the hook for shoddy goods, but it does give the consumer an option to file the case against either the dealer or the manufacturer or both. And it also forces the dealer to be far more careful when it comes to the quality of the products that he sells and the claims that he makes about them. The burning debate over dealer liability was brought to the fore by the poor quality of chilly seeds sold by a dealer—-Sri Krishna Seeds—-to a farmer in Andhra Pradesh. On a complaint from the farmer, Mr Avula Venkata Reddy, about the poor yield , the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum directed that he be appropriately compensated by the dealer, who, however, was unwilling to accept this verdict. His contention was that he was only a seller and was not personally answerable for defective seeds and, therefore, the order ought not to have been passed against him alone and that any such order should hold the manufacturer—-Hindustan Seeds Corporation—-also liable along with him. And on this ground, he filed an appeal before the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, and when it upheld the view of the lower forum, he filed a revision petition before the apex consumer court. Dismissing this argument, the apex consumer court observed: "In our view, no doubt the manufacturer would have been a proper party, but at the same time, the petitioner is a person who has supplied and sold the seeds to the complainant. Therefore, the complaint was maintainable against the petitioner." Interestingly, sometime ago , in another case filed by a farmer, the issue of a dealer’s responsibility came under detailed discussion and here the apex consumer court did not agree with the dealer that the manufacturer alone was responsible for the quality of the product. Agreeing with the lower consumer courts that both were jointly and severally liable, it asked the district forum to ensure execution of the order expeditiously and immediately and if necessary, by making the dealer pay the entire amount and, then, it would be for the dealer to claim reimbursement from the manufacturer (Ashoke Khan Vs Abdul Karim, Revision Petition no 1383 of 2003). Here the product in question was a defective power tiller and the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission quoted a judgement of the Supreme Court in the case of Philip Mampillil vs. Premier Automobiles Ltd., wherein the court had made it clear that the dealer or the agent would be as liable as the manufacturer.
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