Law Commons^™

When Warnings Alone Won’T Do: A Reply To Professor Phillips, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In his paper, Professor Phillips contends that questions about the adequacy of a product's design should be resolved by the use of a risk-utility test and that the existence of an adequate warning should merely be one factor for the jury to take into account. This is essentially the position espoused by the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability (hereinafter Third Restatement), section 2, comment l. On the other hand, Professor PhiIlips is very critical of subsections 6(c) and 6(d). These provisions establish liability for the sellers of prescription drugs and medical devices. Section 6(c), which is concerned …

Massachusetts' Domestic Partnership Challenge: Hope For A Better Future, Jennifer Levi

Faculty Scholarship

Acknowledging that its decision means that "some household members" may be without a "critical social necessity," the Massachusetts Supreme Iudicial Court (SJC) ruled in Connors v. City of Boston that Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino's executive order granting health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of city employees could not stand in the face of a Massachusetts state insurance law. In Connors, the SJC simultaneously recognized that although the demographics of Massachusetts households have changed within the more than forty years since the state insurance law, G.L. c. 32B (Chapter 32B), was adopted, that law nevertheless constrains municipalities from extending …

“Loss Of Earning Capacity” Benefits In The Community Property Jurisdiction--How Do You Figure?, Aloysius A. Leopold

Faculty Articles

In the interest of uniformity, benefits for the loss of earning capacity should be subject to the same legal principle when determining marital property rights, regardless of the context in which those rights arise. However, courts throughout the United States have relied upon four different methods to determine title to loss of earning capacity benefits upon divorce. These approaches include the unitary approach, the analytic approach, the mechanistic approach, and the case-by-case approach.

Because the determination of title to benefits varies tremendously, the need for certainty in this area of the law is necessary particularly in light of the Texas …

Suffer The Little Children: Justifying Same-Sex Marriage From The Perspective Of A Child Of The Union, Lewis A. Silverman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Contingent Employee Benefits Problem, Mark Berger

Faculty Works

In the contemporary American workplace, benefits are a critical a component of overall compensation. American workers look to their employers for such non-salary items as retirement programs, health insurance, sick pay, and paid vacations. However, the costs of such benefits have been rising rapidly and employers have sought ways to avoid paying them. Increasingly, employers have been using various techniques to create a pool of contingent workers who, even if they work side-by-side with the employer's traditional employees, nevertheless receive none of the benefits made available to members of the regular workforce. These contingent employee arrangements include utilizing contract workers, …

Reforming Social Security: A Practical And Workable System Of Personal Retirement Accounts, Fred T. Goldberg, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

This paper details a method for implementing personal retirement accounts (PRAs) as a part of Social Security reform. The approach described here answers the following questions: how funds are collected and credited to each participants' retirement account; how money is invested; and how funds are distributed to retirees. It is designed to accommodate a variety of answers to a wide range of important policy questions; to minimize administrative costs and distribute those costs in a fair and reasonable way; to minimize the burden on employers, especially small employees who do not now maintain a qualified retirement plan; and to meet …