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Strict liability

1992

Fordham Law Review

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Case Against Strict Liability, Alan Schwartz Jan 1992

The Case Against Strict Liability, Alan Schwartz

Fordham Law Review

Professor Schwartz identifies the foundational assumptions of strict products liability law, and argues that these assumptions are either false, not supportive of banishing free contract, or not proven on the current evidence. After showing that, on the evidence now available, strict liability cannot be shown to be more efficient than free contract, Professor Schwartz argues that the choice among legal regimes should be made by a "representative consumer"--a person who knows what is knowable about markets and who knows that he lives in a liberal state, but who does not know what position he will occupy in that state. Professor …


Causal Comparisons, Robert N. Strassfeld Jan 1992

Causal Comparisons, Robert N. Strassfeld

Fordham Law Review

Focusing on the multiple meanings of the statement "A was a more important cause of C than was B," Professor Strassfeld considers the feasibility of comparative causation as a means of apportioning legal responsibility for harms. He concludse that by combining two different interpretations of "more important cause"--judgments of comparative counterfactual similarity and the Uniform Comparative Fault Act approach of comparative responsibility--we can effectively make causal comparisons and avoid the effort to compare such incommensurables as the defendant's fault under a strict liability standard and the plaintiff's failt for failure to exercise reasonable care.