Consumer Protection Law | Open Access Articles

Market Incentives For Safety, W. Kip Viscusi Jan 1985

Market Incentives For Safety, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the heated atmosphere generated by inch-high headlines and multimillion-dollar liability suits, two important facts often get lost. First, society's awareness of what ensuring reasonably complete safety would cost rarely matches the intensity of its demands for such assurance. And second, the most powerful forces working to make products and workplaces safer are not the edicts of government but the dynamics of the market. True, there are situations in which the market cannot by itself create effective incentives for safety, but in the vast majority of cases it can-and does. Drawing on his extensive research into the regulation of risk, …

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Charting The Future Course For Corporate Management Of Health Risks, Michael S. Baram Oct 1984

Charting The Future Course For Corporate Management Of Health Risks, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Corporations engage in technological activities of benefit to society, but thereby also create new health risks for workers, consumers, and communities. Government regulatory agencies deal with this chronic problem by conducting risk analyses and imposing various duties on private firms. Despite agency efforts and corporate compliance, health risks continue to arise and take their toll. To what extent will private firms voluntarily assume greater responsibility for preventing these health risks? This question is of increasing social importance, because the limitations of regulatory efforts are now obvious, whereas health risks are now being identified at what appears to be an increasing …

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Technology Assessment And Social Control, Michael S. Baram May 1973

Technology Assessment And Social Control, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

The emerging concepts of corporate responsibility and technology assessment are, to a considerable extent, responses to problems arising from technological developments and their applications by industry and government. These problems appear in the relatively discrete sectors of consumer protection and occupational safety and in the diffuse sectors of community quality of life and the national and international environments.

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Torts - Liability Of Supplier Of Chattel - Proof Of Manufacturer's Negligence, Whitmore Gray Apr 1956

Torts - Liability Of Supplier Of Chattel - Proof Of Manufacturer's Negligence, Whitmore Gray

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff service station operator brought an action to recover for injuries resulting from the explosion of one of defendant manufacturer's tires. The tire, while admittedly new, had been purchased by a third party some eighteen months before being brought to the plaintiff for mounting. In addition to his own testimony, the only evidence supporting plaintiff's claim of negligence was expert testimony that such an explosion could be caused by defective wire in the bead when a tire was inflated to normal pressure, and also that there was opportunity for negligence in defendant's manufacturing processes. The district court set aside the …

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Manufacturers' Liability To The Ultimate Consumer, Andrew J. Russell Jan 1933