Page - (000597) - in Autonomes Fahren - Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte

57726.2 Why do product liability suits occur? insurance as a means of shifting and managing product liability risk, and other risk management techniques. 26.2 Why do product liability suits occur? First and foremost, manufacturers face product liability suits, because their products are involved in accidents. From the early days in the development of Anglo-American tort4 law, the road accident played a prominent role. A key British case in the development of U.S. tort law, Winterbottom v. Wright,5 involved a mail coach driver who was thrown from his horse-drawn mail carriage after it broke down, allegedly due to the defendant contractor’s failure to maintain the carriage in a safe condition [32].6 Starting in the 20th century, the car accident caused significant changes in U.S. product liability law. “Products liability, like America, grew up with the automobile. Prior to the entry of motorcars onto the nation’s highways, ‘there simply were not large numbers of product-related lawsuits.’ Once America embraced the automobile, it inevitably embraced automotive products suits as well.” [13] Two of the most significant products liability cases in American history arose from auto accidents. In MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., the famous American jurist Benjamin Cardozo writing for the New York Court of Appeals upheld a verdict for a car owner ejected from his Buick car after a defective wooden wheel on the car collapsed [22].7 In Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc. [17],8 the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed a jury verdict against Chrysler and a dealer after the wife of the purchaser had an accident. She testified that she felt something crack in the car, the steering wheel spun sharply, the car veered off the road, and the car struck a highway sign and brick wall. The threadbare descriptions of the car accidents in these appellate courts’ decisions, however, do not reflect the reality of the trial setting in which lawyers for the injured plain- tiffs will describe what might be a catastrophic car accident in unvarnished and sometimes horrific terms. Consider a description of the famous Ford Pinto accident written in Mother 4 “Tort” means “wrong,” and “tort law” provides a mechanism for a plaintiff to seek redress in a civil (i.e., non-criminal) case. 5 It was common in the 19th century for American courts to cite contemporary British cases as precedents. 6 In Winterbottom, the court denied relief to the injured coachman because of a lack of direct contractual relationship, called “privity,” between the plaintiff coachman and the defendant contractor. The coachman was not a party the contract in which the defendant contractor prom- ised to maintain the coach in good working order [32]. 7 The plaintiff had bought the car from a retailer, but could still sue the manufacturer despite the lack of privity with the manufacturer [22]. The car was apparently going 8 miles per hour at the time of the accident [13]. 8 The court rejected privity, a warranty disclaimer, and limits of liability as defenses to the warranty claim of the wife driver of the car and her husband, the owner [17].