Publication Date:
1989-12-15
Description:
Innovation, scientific discovery transformed into valuable products, is a powerful asset for the United States in today's global economy, but it is being put on trial by the U.S. product liability system. Strict liability and huge jury awards, bloated by the uncontrolled imposition of punitive damages, have led to a proliferation of lawsuits, which in turn has created immense legal uncertainty for innovators who want to create new products. Because a high level of legal uncertainty and scientific innovation cannot coexist, new, safe products may be kept off the market and the scope of research and development restricted. Punitive damages constitute the driving force behind this problem, and both judges and legislators should aim at bringing them under control with legal reforms.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Mahoney, R J -- Littlejohn, S E -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1989 Dec 15;246(4936):1395-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17755994" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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