Products Liability: A Commentary

Abstract

My initial reaction, when I was invited to comment on Professor McKean's paper,' was one of blank astonishment, since I could think of no lawyer in the United States-indeed, in the free world-less qualified than myself for such an assignment. In speculating on what the committee on arrangements could have had in mind the only plausible explanation I have been able to come up with is this: it was decided that the Conference would be enlivened by a contribution from a lawyer who knew nothing-and was known to know nothing-either about economic theory or about current legal trends in what has come to be called Products Liability. In preparing to discharge the assignment, I could, of course, have undertaken a crash program of reading myself into some degree of familiarity with at least the legal aspects of the problem. I concluded, however, that such a course was not desirable: I would, had I followed it, have been derelict to the trust which the committee reposed in my ignorance. My function is evidently to comment, in a childlike fashion, on these mysteries-more or less, it may be, like the little boy who, rightly or wrongly, cried out in mid-procession that the Emperor had no clothes on.