My instinct is that liability should go to whoever you paid: if you bought a phone from Verizon, they should be responsible for the device and do whatever they need to with the vendor without involving you in the process. If you buy the phone directly from Samsung, Motorola, etc. they're responsible and should negotiate appropriately with Google for the support they don't want to do in house.
Most of the problem is that the general cycle for Android is a decent base OS which has two levels of middlemen adding cruft to it mostly for marketing reasons and that's as bad as it is because they're only looking potential income. Not letting them dodge liability changes that calculation in favor of either not obstructing the update process for branding reasons or, if they really think their custom UI is such a great selling point, actually hiring enough people to support it reponsibly.
Most of the problem is that the general cycle for Android is a decent base OS which has two levels of middlemen adding cruft to it mostly for marketing reasons and that's as bad as it is because they're only looking potential income. Not letting them dodge liability changes that calculation in favor of either not obstructing the update process for branding reasons or, if they really think their custom UI is such a great selling point, actually hiring enough people to support it reponsibly.