Abstract
With an ever-increasing number of liability lawsuits, are corporations electing to
play it safe rather than risk the uncertainties accompanying innovation? In The Liability
Maze experts address the issues surrounding safety and innovation and present the
most detailed and comprehensive study to date on the actual impact of U.S. liability
law. In recent decades it has been widely assumed that liability laws promote safety
by significantly raising the price companies must pay for negligence, product defects
and accidents. More recently, others have suggested that the broad and unpredictable
sweep of these laws actually deters innovation. The risks of lawsuits are so great
that corporations are showing more caution in product innovation than ever before.The
contributors focus on five sectors of the economy where the liability system appears
to have had the greatest effects, positive or negative: the private aircraft, automobile,
chemical, and pharmaceutical industries, and the medical profession. They suggest
that in many sectors liability law has hampered innovation. In others it has stimulated
safety improvements, although perhaps not so much as vigilant safety regulations.
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