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Full-Text Articles in Business
Torts And Innovation, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
Torts And Innovation, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
All Faculty Scholarship
This Essay exposes and analyzes a hitherto overlooked cost of the current design of tort law: its adverse effect on innovation. Tort liability for negligence, defective products, and medical malpractice is determined by reference to custom. We demonstrate that courts’ reliance on custom and conventional technologies as the benchmark of liability chills innovation and distorts its path. Specifically, the recourse to custom taxes innovators and subsidizes replicators of conventional technologies. We explore the causes and consequences of this phenomenon and propose two possible ways to modify tort law in order to make it more welcoming to innovation.
Who Knew? Admissibility Of Subsequent Remedial Measures When Defendants Are Without Knowledge Of The Injuries, Mark G. Boyko, Ryan G. Vacca
Who Knew? Admissibility Of Subsequent Remedial Measures When Defendants Are Without Knowledge Of The Injuries, Mark G. Boyko, Ryan G. Vacca
Law Faculty Scholarship
Federal Rule of Evidence 407 prohibits the introduction of subsequent remedial measures for the purposes of demonstrating negligence, culpable conduct, or product defect. But the rule breaks down, in application and purpose, when a defendant undertakes the new safety measure after the plaintiff's injury, but before the defendant had knowledge of the loss. Such a situation is not uncommon. Would-be defendants frequently improve their products and product safety for a variety of reasons. Toxic exposure cases, where exposure often predates diagnosis of the injury by a decade or more, represent a prime example of cases where defendants are likely to …