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 and held the dealer fully accountable for product quality! Lest manufacturers get the wrong impression, let me 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 only 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 he makes about them.

The burning debate over dealer liability was brought to the fore by the poor quality of chilli seeds sold by a dealer, Sri Krishna Seeds, to a farmer in Andhra Pradesh. On a complaint from the farmer, 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.

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 complaint was maintainable against the petitioner.” If the dealer had any grievance, it was open to him to recover the compensation amount from the manufacturer, but he cannot argue that a dealer, who sold the seeds was not liable, the court said. (M.Subba Rao vs Avula Venkata Reddy, RP no. 3292 of 2003, decided on March 22, 2007).