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Inside The Quiet Revolution In Products Liability, Theodore Eisenberg, James A. Henderson Jr.

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

"A bullet in the head of products liability reform." Thus did a lobbyist orally characterize our article in this law review, The Quiet Revolution in Products Liability, describing declining plaintiff success in products liability cases in the 1980s. From the coverage and criticism the Quiet Revolution received around the country and around the world, the trends we discovered struck many as surprising enough to be newsworthy and others as sufficiently threatening to warrant a special response. Products liability's sustained presence on state and federal legislative agendas warrants continuing and expanding the study begun in the Quiet Revolution.

This …

The Quiet Revolution In Products Liability, James A. Henderson Jr., Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most revolutions are noisy, tumultuous affairs. This is as true of significant shifts in legal doctrine as it is of shifts of political power through force of arms. Indeed, the pro-plaintiff revolution in American products liability in the early 1960s will forever be associated with heroic, martial images, epitomized in Prosser's description of the assault upon, and fall of, the fortress citadel of privity. The same sort of terminology aptly could be used to describe the last five or ten years of legislative reform activity in the various states. Reacting to what many see as "crises" brought on by courts …

The Quiet Revolution In Products Liability: An Empirical Study Of Legal Change, James A. Henderson Jr., Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most revolutions are noisy, tumultuous affairs. This is as true of significant shifts in legal doctrine as it is of shifts of political power through force of arms. The pro-plaintiff revolution in products liability in the early 1960s will forever be associated with heroic, martial images, epitomized in Prosser's description of the assault upon, and fall of, the fortressed citadel of privity. In contrast to these noisy, exuberant events, the revolution to which we refer has gone all but unnoticed. In fact, some followers of the products liability wars will find our hypothesis so contrary to currently shared wisdom as …