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Dashing Consumer Hopes: Strict Products Liability And The Demise Of The Consumer Expectations Test, Rebecca Korzec
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 …
Arriving At Reasonable Alternative Design: The Reporters' Travelogue, James A. Henderson Jr., Aaron Twerski
Arriving At Reasonable Alternative Design: The Reporters' Travelogue, James A. Henderson Jr., Aaron Twerski
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Substantial commentary and controversy have been generated by the requirement in the new Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability that plaintiffs in most (but not all) cases involving claims of defective product design show that a reasonable alternative design was available and that failure to adopt the alternative rendered the defendant's design not reasonably safe. Henderson and Twerski explain the origins of that requirement and show that it is not only the majority position but also comports with widely shared views regarding the proper objectives of our liability system. Although consumer expectations cannot serve as a workable, stand-alone test for …