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Tort Reform, Innovation, And Playground Design, Benjamin Barton
Tort Reform, Innovation, And Playground Design, Benjamin Barton
College of Law Faculty Scholarship
This essay directly confronts a key claim underlying calls for tort reform: that current product liability law negatively impacts innovation. It begins by outlining the current state of the product liability/innovation debate, and details the arguments and empirical evidence for and against a negative correlation. The essay then argues that when confronted by potential product liability entrepreneurial companies do not simply patch failed products, they fully rethink and redesign them. As such, product liability can actually spur innovation. The essay also indulges in a discussion of the economist Joseph Schumpeter's entrepreneurial mindset and a Calabresian argument that manufacturers are probably …