Should Products Liability Be Based on Hindsight?

O. Ben-Shahar

Working Papers from Tel Aviv

Abstract: In designing and marketing new products, manufacturers face uncertainty regarding the harmful character of their products. If harm occurs due to a defective design, liability is imposed on manufacturers whenever the design of the product is determined to be unreasonably dangerous. In assessing the reasonableness of a design, courts often - although the doctrine is not settled - admit information which was acquired throughout the actual usage of the product - information that often was not scientifically available at the time of production. The Asbestos litigation is a prominent example of this practice. This paper examines the incentive effects of such hindsight.

Keywords: TECHNOLOGICAL; CHANGE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K14 K41 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fth:teavfo:14-97

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Tel Aviv Israel TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY, THE FOERDER INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH, RAMAT AVIV 69 978 TEL AVIV ISRAEL.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().