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THE BHOPALIZATION OF AMERICAN TORT LAW 89 original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. The Bhopalization of American Tort Law Peter W. Huber Since 1960, American tort law has undergone a revolution that can be accurately (if somewhat disrespectfully) described as a mad scramble by the Trial Lawyers of America to keep pace with the National Academies of Engineering and Sciences. New legal arguments have been prepared, tested, honed, and developed on a wide variety of accidents, nonaccidents, illnesses, and cures. Bendectin, Agent Orange, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, the Dalkon Shield, and the pertussis vaccine have all figured in the training. The transformation, in a nutshell, has consisted of shifting the focus of American tort law from "private" risks to "public" ones. And the prime mover has been science: the radical changes in tort law are traceable to equally radical improvements in the science of hazard identification and risk assessment. But not science alone, because the courts have often not been successful in recognizing where science ends and other bodies of learning or ignorance begin. Thus, trans-science (Weinberg, in this volume), nonscience, and a generous dose of sheer nonsense have also figured prominently in the tort law's expansion from the narrow world of private hazards to the universe of public ones. But though the tort system's reach has been greatly extended, the system has yet to demonstrate that with public risks it offers useful deterrence, fair compensation, or a needed vehicle for resolving festering social disputes. An abbreviated version of this paper appears in Issues in Science and Technology vol. 2, no. 1 (Fall 1985):73â82.
