A Skeptical Attitude About Product Liability Is Justified: A Reply to Professors Goldberg and Zipursky
Response to The Easy Case for Products Liability Law: A Response to Professors Polinsky and Shavell, The Uneasy Case for Product Liability
Vol. 123 No. 8
In The Uneasy Case for Product Liability, Professors A. Mitchell Polinsky and Steven Shavell maintained that the benefits of product liability are likely to be less than its costs for many products, especially widely sold ones. The article was intended to alter the dominant view held by the judiciary and commentators that product liability has a clear justification on grounds of public policy. It argued instead that a skeptical attitude toward product liability should be adopted.
Professors John Goldberg and Benjamin Zipursky strongly criticize the article in The Easy Case for Products Liability Law: A Response to Professors Polinsky and Shavell. To a significant extent, however, they attack a straw man, for they impute to the article a radical thesis – that product liability should be eliminated for all widely sold products – that Uneasy manifestly did not advance.