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Analyzed is the changing impact of products liability risk on individuals, firms, & institutions. Rules of products liability have changed repeatedly through history; currently, lawsuit can be brought under rules of express or implied warranty, strict liability torts, or torts of negligence involving improper design, manufacture, or assembly, failure to test for defects, failure to warn of dangerous characteristics, deceptive advertising, inadequate instructions for use, or failure to foresee possible dangers in product use. Several elements have combined to produce a recent increase in the frequency & severity of such litigation, including new developments in the law, new consciousness of product claims, public concern for product safety, & even the increased number of products in use. Thirteen proposals for reducing the burden of such litigation on society are assessed. Modified HA.

This paper presents an analysis of the changing impact of products liability risk on various individuals, firms, and institutions in today's society. After defining products liability and products liability risk, the pendulum-like evolu tion of products liability law is documented. Then an analysis of some of the most important factors responsible for the recent increases in the frequency and severity of products liability litigation is presented. Several of these elements have appar ently combined to produce a synergistic increase in products- related lawsuits. These elements include recent development in the law of products liability, together with a newly emerging products claim consciousness, public concerns about product safety, and the plethora of old and new products in use today. Finally, the paper concludes with an analysis of the potential impact of enacting one or more of the many proposed solutions to the problem of products liability risk.

The Washington Legislature in its 1981 session enacted Senate bill 3158,1 the Tort and Product Liability Reform Act, a comprehensive change in product liability and tort law in the State of Washington. This change, perhaps the most sweeping legislative involvement in Washington tort law in this century, was accomplished after many years of extremely bitter political conflict over product liability and tort reform; Senate bill 3158, however, passed the legislature with little of the acrimony previ- ously associated with the issue. This article explores the involve- ment of the legislature in product liability and tort reform his- torically, reviews the legislative history of Senate bill 3158, and discusses the relationship of the changes contained in the Act to the present law of the State of Washington.

The tort liability of teacher qua teacher encompasses a rather narrow ambit and is largely restricted to cases in which it is alleged that the right of the teacher to enforce discipline has been abused and that the teacher is therefore liable in damages for the commission of an intentional tort. The question in such a case is whether the teacher has exceeded, or acted outside the scope of, his privilege.A particular common law concept was developed very early here defining the privilege as one deriving from the fact that the teacher stood in loco parentis,' and the privilege still rests principally on that concept, although the content of the Latin phrase has undergone considerable change. Of course, there are many harms resulting from negligence whose setting is peculiar to schools or which happen with greater frequency in schools. If the teacher is the negligent actor whose conduct or omission to act (where he is under a duty to act) has caused the harm, he can find no special rules to raise in his defense--he no longer stands in the place of the parent, who is not liable to his child for negligent harm. Under the common law, which obtains in the majority of states, the teacher in the case of either intentional or negligent tort is the only defendant against whom the injured plaintiff can proceed, since the school-governing authority for various reasons is clothed with immunity, as an attribute of sovereignty and as a result of the classification of public education as a governmental function, because the courts will not allow the diversion of public proceeds to satisfy tort claims, or because the doctrine of respondeat superior does not apply. In a few states, the school unit may be sued directly or the teacher may transfer the burden of his liability for negligent, but not intentional, acts to the school-governing body if the act has been committed in the course and scope of the teacher's employment. In both common law and statutory jurisdictions the ordinary rules of negligence are said to obtain. As ...