Strict Products Liability
What are the different categories of SPL?
- Manufacturing Defect
- Design Defect
-Inadequate Warning
What is the attractive nuisance doctrine?
Allows a jury to find ALL Ds liable if:
1) multiple Ds are negligent,
2) but it's unclear which one caused P's injuries.
Two factors to negligence per se?
(1) Is the plaintiff apart of the class the statute intended to protect?
(2) Is the injury the type of harm the legislature intended to protect?
An actor intentionally engages in reckless or outrageous conduct that causes severe emotional distress in another
- Wild animals
- abnormally dangerous activites
What is the consumer expectation test?
Product is found unreasonably dangerous - dangerous beyond ordinary, reasonable consumer expectations
Three categories in Landowner/Tenant rule? (generally)
- invitee
- licensee
- trespasser
What kind of damages can you recover in a negligence cause of action?
-past/future wages
-past/future medical expenses
(aka compensatory damages)
What is transferability of intent?
Provides that a defendant's intent to cause a harmful or offensive contact to one person or create an apprehension of imminent contact to that person may be transferred to an unintended target, thereby subjecting the defendant to liability for battery.
What is trespass to land?
The intentional entry onto the land without consent or authorization
What is the difference between a manufacturing defect and a design defect?
M- Product is not made as intended. Error in production caused a defect.
D- in product liability litigation, a claim that a consumer suffered an injury because a safer product design was not used
What is res ipsa loquitur?
A doctrine under which negligence may be inferred simply because an event occurred, if it is the type of event that would not occur in the absence of negligence. Literally, the term means "the facts speak for themselves."
What is the rescuer doctrine?
Public policy requires that potential rescuers be included in the class of foreseeable plaintiffs. Thus has resulted in "danger invites rescue". A duty will be found owing to the injured rescuer.
Shopkeeper's Privilege?
A defense to false imprisonment, which allows a person who reasonably believes another person is stealing or attempting to steal property to detain that person in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable amount of time.
Reasonable manner ≠ cavity search
What standard is used to measure the conduct of a tortfeasor?
Reasonably Prudent Person
What is the open and obvious rule?
Rule applied in many jurisdictions which holds that manufacturers are not liable for potentially dangerous features of products that are open and obvious to the average person, even when the danger could be easily eliminated by using a safer design or warning.
What is an eggshell plaintiff?
The defendant takes the plaintiff as they find him - can be held liable for ALL injuries regardless of any conditions that were present prior to the incident
Difference between substantial factor and but for?
S- a jury may hold a defendant liable in tort if it finds that defendant's conduct was a major cause of the injury in question
BF-the defendant's conduct is a factual cause of the harm when the harm would not have occurred absent the conduct
What's the difference between battery and assault?
B- The intentional causing of harmful or offensive contact with the person of another
A- The intentional causing of an apprehension of immediate or imminent harmful contact with the person of another
Who's your favorite member of 101?
Payton :)
(1) The usefulness and desirability of the products - its utility to the user and to the public as a whole
(2) The safety aspects of the product - the likelihood that it will cause injury and the probable seriousness of the injury
(3) The availability of a substitute product which would meet the same need and not be as unsafe
(4) The manufacturer's ability to eliminate the unsafe character of the product without impairing its usefulness or making it too expensive to maintain its utility
(5) The user's ability to avoid danger by the exercise of care in the use of the product
(6) The user's anticipated awareness of the dangers inherent in the product and their avoidability because of general
public knowledge of the obvious condition of the product or of the existence of suitable warnings or instructions
(7) The feasibility on the part of the manufacturer of spreading the loss by setting the price of the product or carrying liability insurance
What are the three main categories for duty in a negligence cause of action?
When someone has created a risk of harm
When there is a special relationship
When a statute or law requires it
Explain joint and several liability.
liability that a person or business either shares with other tortfeasors or bears individually
A man’s friend loaned him a baseball cap that was signed by his favorite player. The man wore the friend's cap to a bar, where he hung the cap on a coat rack. A woman in the bar had the same baseball cap, which she had also hung on the rack. The woman prepared to leave the bar and mistakenly took the man’s borrowed cap, thinking that it was her own. The man saw the woman take the cap and attempted to stop her, but she did not notice him and drove off before he could prevent her from leaving. When the woman returned home, she realized that the cap was signed by a baseball player and was not hers. The woman decided to keep the cap anyway.
Conversion or trespass to chattels?
Conversion
Name three of the requirements that makes something abnormally dangerous.
(1) high degree of harm
(2) likelihood resulting harm will be great
(3) inability to eliminate risk by reasonable care
(4) activity is not a matter of common usage
(5) inappropriateness of activity
(6) value of community outweighed by dangerous activity