Products Liability

Products Liability Synopsis

This edition of the casebook remains sufficiently flexible to meet widely varying needs. It is appropriate to use in a two or a three hour course. The structure of the book permits omission of entire chapters or portions of chapters without disrupting the flow of the course. The book is arranged so that the core of products liability law is presented in the first six chapters, but the materials may also be taught out of order. Topics include misrepresentation and warranty law, defects and reasonableness, cause-in-fact, proof, proximate cause and damages. The remaining chapters cover core topics in products liability litigation. After a brief introduction, chapters 1 and 2 address the application of misrepresentation and warranty law to products cases. These theories remain viable in most jurisdictions and in a few jurisdictions that never adopted the Restatement (Second) of Torts Section 402A, they remain at the core of modern products liability law. Chapters 3 and 4 address the development of modern products liability law and its defining characteristic: its focus on the concept of "defect" rather than the concept of reasonableness. Chapter 5 addresses cause-in-fact. Here as elsewhere the book does not attempt to reprise the coverage of this topic in the first year tort course, but rather focuses on the special cause-in-fact issues that typically emerge in product liability cases. Likewise, chapters 6, 7 and 9 focus on the proof, proximate cause, and damages questions that most frequently arise in the products liability arena. The remaining chapters in the book cover the remaining core topics in products liability litigation: a) the effect of statutes and regulations b) apportionment of liability between plaintiff and defendant and among defendants in multi-party litigation c) the effect of statutes of limitations and repose d) parties and transactions that are covered and are not covered by products liability law e) complex litigation, including multidistrict litigation, class actions, and other forms of aggregate claim resolution.