1. Be Prepared to Describe Precisely What the Law Was After Winterbottom and Huset And

Day 23

1. Be prepared to describe precisely what the law was after Winterbottom and Huset and before McPherson.

2. What changed by Cardozo’s decision in McPherson? What situations were still outside the scope of products liability? What issues were left unanswered?

3.. Examine Traynor’s rationales for strict liability – how do they parallel or differ from the rationales we examined earlier for vicarious liability?

Day 24

1. Hypos: for each consider whom the possible plaintiffs can sue and on what c/a (i) under earlier law from prior assignment? (ii) Under 402A? (iii) under RTT [note that some of the relevant RTT rules are scattered throughout this set of readings]?

a) I sell you my car which has defective brakes and you are injured? b) church group sells contaminated burgers at the annual city Fourth of July celebration

c) you take your clothes to my Laundromat and they are ruined in the dryer

d) you rent a generator from Rent-All which is defective and blows up?

e) you are driving a Fard you bought from Manroney Fard dealer: the wheel falls off and you run into me, injuring both of us:

e) I buy a prepackaged cake made by Sara Leone and sold at Pubix and

it has ground glass in it which injures my throat

it has nuts in it and I’m allergic to nuts

It has a lot of sugar in it and as a diabetic food addict I’m harmed by eating several slices

f) I buy an extension ladder at Lowes to get my cat off the roof and

I don’t look carefully and don’t see crack; I then climb up/ ladder breaks at crack under my weight and I’m injured

Same except that I see the crack but decide to climb up anyway hoping for the best given felt need to act quickly

g) Joe buys a 15 year old Fard pickup for his lawn care business; while Fred is riding in it, truck collapses because of a crack in suspension and Fred in injured

2. What is the economic loss rule? What is the rationale for limiting certain claimants to contractual remedies?

3. Closely examine the different rationales for the holding in Cafazzo: which ones are persuasive? If you used each of these rationales what would the scope of the rule be (i.e. precisely which situations would be viewed as outside the scope of products liability law)?

Day 25.

Read all the assigned materials except 777 n.2, 785 n. 2; 792 n. 1, 794-7, nn. 3-5; 802 n. 4

As you go through these materials, reread the Third Restatement @ 753-54.

How should Speller be decided if the court were applying RTT § 3?

Sometimes it is apparent that a particular product design is dangerous, at least in certain circumstances. What different approaches do the scholars and cases take to the legal relevance of such apparent riskiness?

At the end of the class I will want each of you to be able to chart out the different rules for deciding if a plaintiff can recover on the claim that a product design caused harm. What would the plaintiff have needed to show under McPherson? Escola? How about Volkswagen? Barker? Potter [@ 801]? Force [in the supplement]?