Law Commons^™

Dashing Consumer Hopes: Strict Products Liability And The Demise Of The Consumer Expectations Test, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

The threshold issue in American products liability litigation is whether the product was defective at the time it left the manufacturer's control. Traditionally, courts and scholars define “defect” in three functional categories: manufacturing defects, design defects and marketing defects. American products liability doctrine employs two major tests to determine whether a "defect” exists: the seller-oriented risk-utility test and the buyer-oriented consumer expectations test. The Draft of the Restatement Third of Torts: Products Liability, like some American jurisdictions, rejects the “consumer expectations” test as an independent standard in defective warning and design cases. Ironically, this limitation of the use of the …

Consumer Sovereignty: A Unified Theory Of Antitrust And Consumer Protection Law, Neil W. Averitt, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is about the relationship between antitrust and consumer protection law. Its purpose is to define each area of law, to delineate the boundary between them, to show how they interact with each other, and to show how they ultimately support one another as the two component parts of an overarching unity: effective consumer choice (also called consumer sovereignty).

Consumer choice only is effective when two fundamental conditions are present. There must be a range of consumer options made possible through competition, and consumers must be able to choose effectively among these options. The antitrust laws are intended to …

Consumer Choice: The Practical Reason For Both Antitrust And Consumer Protection Law, Neil W. Averitt, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is about the relationship between antitrust and consumer protection law. Its purpose is to define each area of law, to delineate the boundary between them, to show how they interact with each other, and to show how they ultimately support one another as the two components of a single overarching unity. That overarching unity is consumer choice. Antitrust and consumer protection law share a common purpose in that both are intended to facilitate the exercise of consumer sovereignty or effective consumer choice. Such consumer choice exists when two fundamental conditions are present: (l) there must be a range …