Responsabilidade civil das plataformas de marketplace por fato e vício de produtos e serviços

Abstract

E-commerce has been rapidly growing in the 21st century, and companies have looked for different ways of expanding and creating a competitive edge, often resulting in more complex business structures, such as the marketplaces, which consists in a virtual platform that allow third-party sellers to advertise their products and services on it. This business model has its own advantages, but also favors confusion in consumers’ behavior, who may not understand with which party they are buying, thus being unable to know who is responsible for occasional defects of and damages caused by products and services. In this scenario, this work aims to identify who is accountable for which cases in the marketplace environment according to applicable legislation, specifically when the platform itself is responsible for defects and damages, being essential to avoid consumers’ insecurity. To do so, it was conducted an applied nature-descriptive goal research, with a qualitative and deductive approach, through bibliographic and documentary research. It is concluded that suppliers involved in the consumption chain, including the marketplace, must jointly and severally indemnify consumers of defective products, as well as damaging services. Otherwise, it is found that damage causing products only imply liability for their producers, importers and merchants, none of these categories including the marketplace, except for when it performs typically trade related activities or appears as such to the consumer, based on a reasonable misunderstanding of the relation. In these cases, the platform must be reckoned as merchants, thus being accountable in the terms of article 13 of the Código de Defesa do Consumidor.