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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Oh, I don't know that that's sufficient. At least here in the US, it
> still has to be somebody's *fault*.
Not really. However, product safety has been legislated to be a
strict-liability tort. What that means is, the Congress made rules that
said if someone gets hurt by your product, even through no fault of the
manufacturer, they can still get money from the manufacturer.
This was originally due to the fact that polio vaccinations would
normally be expected to kill some tiny percentage (1 in a million?) of
those receiving them, simply due to the way they worked. The government
thought it would be reasonable to make the polio vaccine manufacturers
buy the insurance to pay off claims associated with that. But they had a
hard time limiting it to just vaccinations.
So now, about a third of the cost of a ladder goes towards paying
insurance against claims by people too stupid to know how to use a
ladder (or using it wrongly even when they're not stupid). About half
the cost of a bicycle helmet goes towards paying insurance. Etc.
(There are a handful of other strict-liability torts around too:
excavation, construction using explosives, etc. Even if you do
everything right when you're digging a swimming pool, and the
neighborhood kid falls in and breaks his leg, or your house collapses
because it was built wrong, it's the responsibility of the pool builder
to pay it off.)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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