Law Commons^™

Use Of Comparative Risk Methods In Regulatory And Common Law, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Several persistent problems afflict risk decisionmaking. In the regulatory context, agencies confront the problems of how to prioritize risks for best use of their limited resources and how to determine "how safe is safe enough," or a risk limit, when action is to be taken on a particular risk.

In the trial courts hearing toxic tort actions, the jury must often determine whether an activity is "unreasonably dangerous" or a product is "defective" because of its risk attributes.

To resolve these problems, many have proposed the use of risk comparisons. Now that we can quantify risks, why not compare them …