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Full-Text Articles in Legal Remedies
Pricing Lives For Corporate Risk Decisions, W. Kip Viscusi
Pricing Lives For Corporate Risk Decisions, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law Review
The 2014 GM ignition-switch recall highlighted the inadequacies of the company's safety culture and the shortcomings of regulatory sanctions. The company's inattention to systematic thinking about product safety can be traced to the hostile treatment of corporate risk analyses by the courts. This Article proposes that companies should place a greater value on lives at risk than they have in previous risk analyses and that they should receive legal protections for product risk analyses. Companies' valuations of fatality risks and regulatory penalties have priced lives too low. The guidance provided by the value of a statistical life, which is currently …
On Product "Design Defects" And Their Actionability, John W. Wade
On Product "Design Defects" And Their Actionability, John W. Wade
Vanderbilt Law Review
This Article has tried to explain and discuss these developments, to evaluate them, to show their relationship to the general state of the law, and to make suggestions on how far they should affect its future development. At present, the question of "design defects" and the determination of when a product is actionable because of the nature of its design appears to be the most agitated and controversial question before the courts in the field of products liability. I hope that this Article can be of some help to the courts in seeking to develop the most suitable answer to …
Limitations On Liability For Economic Loss Caused By Negligence: A Pragmatic Appraisal, Fleming James, Jr.
Limitations On Liability For Economic Loss Caused By Negligence: A Pragmatic Appraisal, Fleming James, Jr.
Vanderbilt Law Review
Even if liability for indirect economic consequences of negligence may in some cases be too broad and open-ended to be endured, care should be taken to see whether that is true in all types of situations; if it is not true, one must examine whether a rule may be fashioned to separate the wheat from the chaff. In this discussion it has been assumed that if the pragmatic consideration has any validity, it is in the field of indirect economic loss rather than that of physical damage. As one commentator put it, "only a limited amount of physical damage can …
Variation On Libel Per Quod, Laurence H. Eldredge
Variation On Libel Per Quod, Laurence H. Eldredge
Vanderbilt Law Review
During the nineteenth century it became settled common law in England and in the United States that in any action for libel, as distinct from slander, the plaintiff could recover damages without pleading or proving that he had in fact suffered any damages as a result of the publication. The American Law Institute accepted this as sound law. Volume III of the Restatement of Torts, published in 1938, stated the rule in section 569: "One who falsely, and without a privilege to do so, publishes matter defamatory to another in such a manner as to make the publication a libel …
Should The Doctrine Of Implied Warranties Be Limited To Sales Transactions?, Robert B. Deen Jr., Charles H. Warfield
Should The Doctrine Of Implied Warranties Be Limited To Sales Transactions?, Robert B. Deen Jr., Charles H. Warfield
Vanderbilt Law Review
The purpose of this discussion is to examine implied warranties in order to determine if their application is limited to sales transactions. In approaching this problem, it is necessary to understand the development of warranty. In the early law, warranty was a pure action of tort.' Special assumpsit developed over a hundred years later than warranty and was based on the tort action of warranty. Thus, at the beginning, assumpsit was thought of as a tort action. Later assumpsit came to be regarded as similar to covenant and hence became classified with contract actions. Warranty was still considered a tort …