Washington Supreme Court rules: Amazon can be sued over suicides in lawsuit alleging that Amazon has known for years …

The Washington Supreme Court has now ruled unanimously that e-commerce major Amazon.com must face lawsuits brought by families who lost their relatives to suicide after consuming sodium nitrite purchased from third-party vendors on its platform. As reported by Reuters, all the nine justices have rejected the decision of lower courts which shielded Amazon from negligence claims, which argued that suicide was a ‘superseding cause’ of death.

Writing for the court, Justice G. Helen Whitener said that Amazon owed customers a duty of reasonable care and must avoid exposing them to “harm from the foreseeable conduct of a third party.”