Fault liability

The following distinction is made in some discussions of product liability. Strict liability compensation is provided by the pnxlucer/manufactuier. No-fault liability or scheme compensation is provided by a central fund. 

Criteria Germany cl 823 ofBGB Fault Liability EC Directive 85/374/EEC Liability... 

Civil actions for damages in cases of injury negligence assessment of damages defences. No fault liability systems advantages and disadvantages. 

C. The Necessity of Discretionary Liability Limitation in the Case of Strict Liability. Strict or direct liability is a no-fault liability. However, it is much more than a mere contingent liability which would solely require a causative connection between the operation of a technical product and the occurrence of the damage in order to be able to establish liability. Strict or direct liability which is all-encompassing is restricted by assessing points of view which, besides the already-mentioned upper limit, include, in general ... 

The queshon to be asked in respect of no fault liability, where individual employers contribute to a national scheme according to their performance, is whether the remoteness of the penalty (premium payment) from the events (the accidents and compensation pa5unents) demotivates employers from taking actions necessary to remove the cause of the accident. This is a complex area since it inevitably involves humanitarian attitudes as well as the purely economic. 

The Consumer Protection Act, 1987, was enacted in the UK to fulfil obligations to implement a European Directive designed to protect consumers across member states. It introduces so-called strict liability (as opposed to fault liability in contract and tort) for defective products supplied in the course of a business. Where damage is caused by a defect in a product then the producer is liable to compensate the injured party whether or not he is at fault (Falla, 1997). 

Critics have long complained about the ineffectiveness of medical liability law both as a means of reducing the risks of injuries and as a system of compensation for injuries. So far, none of these critiques has led policy makers to jettison our fault-based medical liability system and to replace it with some type of no-fault system as proposed by some scholars. Thus some form of medical liability is going to be a feature of the social and regulatory... 

Policy makers, practitioners, and scholars from a variety of disciplines have recently embraced a new approach to risk reduction in health care—a "systems approach"—without proposing any specific reforms of medical liability law. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) placed its imprimatur on this approach in its recent reports (Kohn et al., 2000 IOM, 2001). In its simplest form, a systems approach to risk reduction in health care posits that an injury to a patient is often the manifestation of a latent error in the system of providing care. In other words, a medical mishap is the proverbial "accident waiting to happen" because the injury-preventing tools currently deployed, including medical liability law, are aimed at finding the individuals at fault rather than the systemic causes of error. Coexistence of a systems approach to error reduction and medical liability law as a conceptual framework for policy makers implies that the latter is likely to evolve in an incremental fashion as the former makes more visible different aspects of the medical error problem. 

Manufacturers of products placed into commerce (including pharmaceutical manufacturers) are liable for harms caused by their defective products without the need for the plaintiff to prove that the manufacturer was negligent or at fault. This approach, known as strict liability, is one of the main approaches used in product liability cases. Strict liability is based on the three-part rationale that manufacturers are in a better position to spread... 

Vaccine liability issues were also covered in Section 304 of the Homeland Security Act (HSA) of 2002as amended in April 2003, in which Congress enacted liability protection for manufacturers of smallpox vaccines. Vaccine liability can be handled in four different ways the government can substitute itself as the defendant, it can decide nobody need be liable and provide no-fault compensation, it can indemnify manufacturers after they have been sued and lost, or it can alter the normal rules of litigation. In the HSA, the government substitutes itself as the defendant if the HHS Secretary declares an actual or potential bioterrorist incident or other actual or potential public health emergency makes advisable the administration of a covered countermeasure," such as a vaccine. Secretary Tommy Thompson issued the first such declaration on January 24, 2003. 

The third policy, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund, introduced a government-run, no-fault product liability system that reduced the mean and variance of product liability costs associated with four childhood vaccines polio, diphtheria-tetanus, measles-mumps-rubella, and pertussis. 

It is an excellent maxim always to consider the situation from the complainant s point of view and if the product is clearly at fault then an apology should be offered this often serves to disarm a complainant expecting to do battle. Note, however, that admitting liability should be avoided as it restricts negotiations if legal proceedings ensue and may invalidate liability insurance. 

Among other things, this Limited Warranty applies to your ability to install an electronic file or software or such an installation s effects on your computer or other electronic devices. Plunkett Research, Ltd. assumes no liability and does not guarantee that this Data will install or function correctly on your computer or other electronic devices and further does not guarantee or accept any liability for the results of your attempt to install this Data, including any fault or dysfunction (including, but not limited to computer viruses and/or alterations to computer files, registries or setups) to your computer or electronic devices that may be caused by installation or use. 

A manufacturer who can show that the materials (or products) made cannot be faulted because nothing better is available to meet the usage guidelines put forward by the final customer (and not necessarily the specifications), using the most modem experimental techniques and mathematical models is most likely to be successful in preventing product liability concerns, and may even not face many lawsuits of this kind. 

Some environmental and worker safety laws carry not only corporate or civil but also personal criminal liability. Usually this applies only in extreme cases of willful neglect or intentional falsification of records, but it is there to put some teeth into the laws. These penalties are usually reserved for top-management levels but could apply to a rank-and-file worker if it was determined that he or she deliberately did not follow a clear procedure and that there was an intent to enforce penalties for not following the procedure. In other words, if it is management s intent to look the other way in the case of employee misconduct, then management, not the employee, is at fault and is therefore liable. 

The developers acknowledged moral (though not legal) liability for the harm done and paid compensation to affected patients. They were not negligent because current science did not provide a possibility of predicting the effect, i.e. state of the art defence applied. The law did not provide for strict liability or no-fault compensation (see p. 10). 

Although Section 304 satisfied some of the liability concerns, it failed to address health care worker worries about compensation for lost wages due to side effects of the vaccine (27). In addition. Section 304 did not address hospital and health care worker concerns about whether compensation would be adequate for victims of vaccine complications, including victims, such as household contacts, who were not vaccine recipients. Consequently, on April 30, 2003, the President signed a law to compensate health care workers or first responders injured by the preevent smallpox vaccination program. The law established a no-fault fund that had the following provisions (35) ... 

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