Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Wading Through The Muddle Of Risk-Utility Analysis, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The original emphasis of risk-utility analysis on the need for balanced decisions with respect to product liability is a correct and fundamental principle. Moreover, many traditional factors that have been considered are legitimate, but they did not provide a framework for comprehensive and consistent risk-utility judgments. The development in this Article of a series of economic formulations of the risk-utility test is intended to establish a sounder basis for a products liability defect doctrine.