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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