Product Liability and Innovation Managing Risk in an Uncertain Environment (1994) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
The Effects of Product Liability on Automotive Engineering Practice
The Effects of Product Liability on Automotive Engineering Practice
Pages 77-81
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From page 77... ...
The girl could not sue the boy, because he did not have any money, so instead, she went after the manufacturer. As different as these cases may be-a collision with a horse, a woman locking herself in a trunk, and an instance of severe reckless driving they all have four major points in common: First, the vehicles involved met all of the requisite federal safety standards at the time of their design and manufacture.
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From page 78... ...
PRODUCT LLABILIlY IMPACTS ON AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING PRACTICE The proliferation of product litigation cases in the United States raises an important question for those who design and engineer cars and trucks. In fact, it is a question that was asked in the title of an article written by automotive business writer Paul Eisenstein (1993)
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From page 79... ...
The third element of the threat of product liability is that it can actually prevent manufacturers from implementing new or improved designs in their vehicles quickly, the backward logic being that implementing a design change quickly is often misconstrued in a courtroom as an admission of a faulty design. As a result, manufacturers may be slower to implement improvements simply because of the fear that someone might contend that they knew from the start that a vehicle or component was deficient, even though the ability to make quick product changes can be a strong competitive advantage.
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From page 80... ...
It should also be noted that if indeed the number of product liability suits has a direct causal link with the safety and innovativeness of automobiles, the United States should have the most innovative and safest cars on the road. As the Investor's Business Daily article referred to earlier points out, in 1992, while Ford faced more than 1,000 product liability cases in the United States, Ford of Europe had just one product liability suit.
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From page 81... ...
But in the United States, the situation has gone beyond punishing gross negligence. Now punishment is meted out for many risks that simply cannot be avoided when a product is produced and sold to a public that has wide discretion in how it chooses to use that product.
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