Category Archives: Products liability
Tennant and Van Heerden, ‘Product Liability in an Age of Development Risks: Should South Africa Reconsider Adopting a Development Risk Defence?’
ABSTRACT To provide protection against harm caused by defective, unsafe products and to promote product safety, the law of product liability has developed as a specialized area of the law of delict (tort). The vexing question is, who should bear such liability? This contribution interrogates the notorious EU development risk defence, which exonerates manufacturers that […]
‘EU brings product liability rules in line with digital age and circular economy’
Today the Council adopted a directive to update the EU’s civil liability law. The new liability rules better take into account that nowadays many products have digital features and that the economy is becoming increasingly circular … (more) [Press Release, Council of the EU, 10 October 2024]
Lars Noah, ‘Market Shift Liability for Generic Drugs: Market Share Theory’s Eccentric New Cousin’
ABSTRACT Market share liability, which permits allocating proportional responsibility on each tortious member of an industry when victims cannot identify the source of their injurious exposure, enjoyed its judicial heyday in the 1980s. It originated in the peculiar setting of litigation over a distinctive cancer that developed decades after in utero exposure to the drug […]
Kim and Fortnow, ‘Contract and Commercial Law Challenges with AI Products and Services’
ABSTRACT The development of AI promises to increase innovation and facilitate advancements in multiple fields. Yet, as companies rush products to market in a race for dominance in this highly competitive field, the potential for widespread social harm is foreseeable. In the absence of legislation, commercial law and tort law provide standards and remedies governing […]
Maggie Wittlin, ‘Evidence of Compliance’
ABSTRACT In a products liability case, should evidence of compliance with regulatory safety standards be admissible to show absence of a design defect? The longstanding, traditional answer to the question is ‘yes’, and the Third Restatement of Torts agrees: compliance with a safety statute or regulation is generally admissible and probative, but not dispositive, on […]
George Priest, ‘The Deep Contradiction between Product Liability and Market Share Liability’
ABSTRACT This essay discusses the conceptual bases of modern products liability and of market share liability. It attempts to show the vast difference – almost to the point of being contradictory – between these two mechanisms for apportioning liability for injuries from product use. Because of the substantial relative dominance of products liability law in […]
Baumann and Rasch, ‘Product Liability and Reasonable Product Use’
ABSTRACT A monopolist offers different variants of a possibly dangerous product to heterogeneous customers who choose among product variants that are distinguished by different safety levels. Customers’ choice of product use codetermines expected harm. We find that even when customers are perfectly informed about product variants’ safety, product liability can increase welfare by limiting the […]
‘Mentioning the Unmentionable Parts of Tort Law: Responding to Silence with Discourse’
Anita Bernstein, ‘Renewing Products Liability with Semen’, 73 DePaul Law Review 211 (2024). Of the tens of thousands of reported civil cases in Westlaw’s torts database, would it surprise you that a mere 34 opinions in the set use the word ‘vulva’? Even then, the term is often mentioned only as a quote from a […]
Sandra Wachter, ‘Limitations and Loopholes in the EU AI Act and AI Liability Directives: What This Means for the European Union, the United States, and Beyond’
ABSTRACT Predictive and generative artificial intelligence (AI) have both become integral parts of our lives through their use in making highly impactful decisions. AI systems are already deployed widely – for example, in employment, healthcare, insurance, finance, education, public administration, and criminal justice. Yet severe ethical issues, such as bias and discrimination, privacy invasiveness, opaqueness, […]
Solaiman and Malik, ‘Regulating algorithmic care in the European Union: evolving doctor–patient models through the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI-Act) and the liability directives’
ABSTRACT This article argues that the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into healthcare, particularly under the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI-Act), poses significant implications for the doctor–patient relationship. While historically paternalistic, Western medicine now emphasises patient autonomy within a consumeristic paradigm, aided by technological advancements. However, hospitals worldwide are adopting AI more rapidly than […]