Law Commons^™

Restating The Law: The Dilemmas Of Products Liability, Robert L. Rabin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Tracing products liability law from its origins to present day developments, Professor Rabin discusses the long-standing presence of interwoven strands of contract and tort ideology, as well as the perennial tensions between strict liability and negligence. These themes are evident both in the distinctly influential California case law and in the two Restatement efforts to systematize the doctrine that has emerged nationally. Rabin identifies the manner in which foundational ideological precepts of consumer expectations and enterprise liability have contributed to a continuously dynamic, if often unsettled, debate over the appropriate regime for resolving product injury claims.

Regulatory Standards And Products Liability: Striking The Right Balance Between The Two, Teresa Moran Schwartz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Common law courts have a long tradition of borrowing legislative and regulatory standards to define standards of care under the tort system. Treating such standards as setting minimum levels of care and safety under tort law, the courts uniformly have ruled that violations of standards constitute negligence per se, while compliance is merely evidence of negligence. Although critics of the tort system have urged legislatures and courts to adopt rules giving greater weight to regulatory compliance in products liability cases, the drafters of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability have declined to do so. They have adopted instead an …

Developing A Victims' Suit For Injuries Caused By A Compulsorily Released Prisoner, Leonard M. Niehoff

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note advocates the development of a tort remedy for victims injured by a compulsorily released prisoner. This remedy would be based on existing tort theory permitting suits against third parties whose negligence causes or facilitates a criminal act. The victim would bring suit against both the state and third parties who aided in the criminal release determination . To support his claim, the victim would allege: (1) that state officials negligently selected the offending inmate for early release; and (2) that the state negligently maintained the unconstitutional prison conditions which precipitated the release.

Part I of this Note discusses …

Workmen's Compensation: Toward A Stricter Liability For Enterprise, John A. Payne Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article considers the situation in which an employee injured by a defective product in the course of his employment can proceed both against his employer insured by a workmen's compensation program and against a manufacturer of the employer's equipment who is strictly liable under a claim of products liability. The focus is not on the manufacturer as employer but on the manufacturer as supplier of defective equipment which causes injury. This is the best situation for analyzing the problems arising from the present system for distributing losses because, where the negligence of the employer has been an independent cause …