Category Archives: Products liability
Steven Feldman Reviews Boilerplate
“In her book, Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, and The Rule of Law, Professor Margaret Jane Radin suggests the expansion of tort law as the centerpiece remedy for what she terms abusive mass market contract boilerplate. (Radin, p. 216). As a complement to existing contract remedies, she posits a new tort, i.e., ‘intentional deprivation [...]
Joanna Shepherd, ‘Products Liability and Economic Activity: An Empirical Analysis of Tort Reform’s Impact on Businesses, Employment, and Production’
Abstract: For decades, advocates of tort reform have argued that expansive products liability stifles economic activity by imposing excessive and unpredictable liability costs on businesses. Although politicians aspiring to create jobs, attract businesses, and improve the economy have relied on this argument to enact hundreds of reforms, it has largely gone empirically untested. No longer. [...]
Florian Baumann and Heinrich-Klaus Heine, ‘Innovation, Tort Law, and Competition’
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the link between innovative activity on the part of firms, the competitive pressure to introduce innovations and optimal damages awards. While innovative activity brings forth valuable new products for consumers, competitive pressure in the ensuing innovation race induces firms to launch innovations too early, thereby raising the likelihood of [...]
Keith Hylton, ‘The Law and Economics of Products Liability’
Abstract: This paper presents a largely positive analysis of products liability law, in the sense that it aims to predict the incentive effects and the welfare consequences of the law, with close regard to its specific legal tests and the real-world constraints that impinge on these tests. The other major part of this paper is [...]
W Kip Viscusi, ‘Does Product Liability Make Us Safer?’
Abstract: Product liability law is intended to create an environment that fosters safer products. However, this law often has adverse consequences. Some of the problems stem from the inherent nature of product risk decisions and the function of tort liability, while others may derive from individuals’ cognitive limitations and inability to think properly about balancing [...]
Theodore Eisenberg, ‘The Empirical Effects of Tort Reform’
Abstract: Tort reforms enacted in response to asserted crises date back to the 1970s and have emphasized the highly visible areas of punitive damages, medical malpractice, and products liability. Little evidence exists that reform of punitive damages affected the ratio between punitive and compensatory damages. This is consistent with the absence of evidence that punitive [...]
Nadia Sawicki, ‘Patient Protection and Decision Aid Quality: Regulatory and Tort Law Approaches’
Abstract: One of the most enduring debates at the intersection of administrative and tort law focuses on the challenge of identifying the most effective means of ensuring consumer safety. In some circumstances, standard-setting administrative regulations may be sufficient to protect consumers from harm while at the same supporting the growth of valuable industries. In other [...]
Sheila Scheuerman, ‘Against Liability for Private Risk-Exposure’
Abstract: Can a plaintiff who has not yet suffered an injury sue based on the risk of future harm? After decades of addressing whether these “no injury” or “unmanifested defect” suits are cognizable, courts today are intractably divided. This conflict has created incentives for forum-shopping as plaintiffs search for a jurisdiction friendly to “no injury” [...]
Tetty Havinga, ‘The Influence of Liability Law on Food Safety on Preventive Effects of Liability Claims and Liability Insurance’
Abstract: Most research on food safety has focused on direct forms of food safety regulation. This paper explores product liability law as a driver of food safety measures in firms. Its purpose is to widen the debate on liability law to include discussion of the actual impact on firm behaviour. Liability law is assumed to [...]
Martin Kotler, ‘Tort Reform and Implied Conflict Preemption ‘
“… The Article will proceed as follows: in Part II, after reviewing, in somewhat summary fashion, the twists and turns of products liability law since the adoption of 402A in 1965, we turn to the question the current understanding of the function of imposing liability for defectively designed products. Somewhat more specifically, the section traces [...]
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