Law Commons^™

Product Liability's Parallel Universe: Fault-Based Liability Theories And Modern Products Liability Law, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Strict liability has always been the heart and soul of American products liability law. As early as 1963, Justice Roger Traynor in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. stated that "[a] manufacturer is strictly liable in tort when an article he places on the market, knowing that it will be used without inspection for defects, proves to have a defect that causes injury to a human being." Shortly thereafter, the drafters of section 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts made it clear that the exercise of due care would not shield sellers from liability when their products caused injury. …

Attorney Referral, Negligence, And Vicarious Liability, Bruce Ching

Journal Articles

As a consequence of requests from clients or prospective clients, lawyers are often placed in a position of giving referrals, especially in situations of cross-specialty referrals (such as an estate planning attorney whose longtime client has become a party in a personal injury lawsuit) or cross-jurisdictional referrals (such as an attorney in Michigan who is contacted by a prospective client who must respond to a lawsuit that was filed in Ohio).

But if the lawyer who receives the referral commits malpractice in handling the case, can the lawyer who made the referral be held liable for the client's loss? This …

Khalifa V. Shannon: How Much Interference Is Too Much When It Comes To A Tort For Interfering With The Parent-Child Relationship?, Beth Rosenberg

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

When Less Liability May Mean More Precaution: The Case Of Nanotechnology, David A. Dana

Faculty Working Papers

The heart of the Article is an exploration of the possible role of common law tort liability in both encouraging and deterring voluntary, precautionary study of new products generally and nanotechnology products in particular. A key variable in considering liability's role as an incentive or deterrent to testing is the manufacturer's subjective assessment of the probability that any injuries from its product would be detected by the injured parties and successfully attributed to the product absent research by the manufacturer itself on the adverse effects of the product. Another key variable is the legal standard for tort liability, and specifically …

On Restating Products Liability Preemption, Mary J. Davis

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article provides a brief explanation of the state of preemption doctrine and explains how the Court altered, quite dramatically, its treatment of preemption of common law tort actions in the last two decades. The Court's almost exclusive focus on the interpretation of express preemption provisions, which never specifically address common law tort claims one way or the other, turned "traditional" preemption analysis of common law tort claims on its head. The Court then, almost as suddenly, signaled a retreat from the emphasis on express preemption analysis and returned, awkwardly, to implied preemption doctrine. The Court has only recently begun …

Liability Insurance At The Tort-Crime Boundary, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores how liability insurance mediates the boundary between torts and crime. Liability insurance sometimes separates these two legal fields, for example through the application of standard insurance contract provisions that exclude insurance coverage for some crimes that are also torts. Perhaps less obviously, liability insurance also can draw parts of the tort and criminal fields together. For example, professional liability insurance civilizes the criminal law experience for some crimes that are also torts by providing defendants with an insurance-paid criminal defense that provides more than ordinary means to contest the state’s accusations. The crime-tort separation in liability insurance …

The "Other" Intermediaries: The Increasingly Anachronistic Immunity Of Managing General Agents And Independent Claims Adjusters, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

This article addresses the "other" intermediaries involved in the administration of insurance policies, specifically "downstream" intermediaries, who are engaged in the administration of insurance claims. The focus is on managing general agents, third-party administrators and independent contractor claims adjusters, who perform the nuts-and-bolts tasks of the insurance industry, and are generally less well compensated than commercial insurance brokers. Since these "other" intermediaries are immune from judicial claims by policyholders, they are also less incentivized to perform their duties well. The article argues that, in order to improve the claims process, the "other" intermediaries should be held accountable for their misconduct, …