The Government Contractor Defense

Litigation involving defective products has increasingly become a pre-trial battle to overcome a series of technical defenses that have become a stock part of the manufacturer\u27s defense. Defendants invariably raise the government contractor defense where the defective product resulted from some governmental involvement in the manufacturing process, no matter how peripheral or superfluous was the government\u27s involvement in that process. The defense by its nature only applies to design defect cases. A defect in the manufacturing process is not protected by the defense

In Defense of DEFECT or Cooperation does not Justify the Solution Concept

The one-state machine that always defects is the only evolutionarily stable strategy in the machine game that is derived from the prisoners' dilemma, when preferences are lexicographic in the complexity. This machine is the only stochastically stable strategy of the machine game when players are restricted to choosing machines with a uniformly bounded complexity.Cooperation; prisoners' dilemma; automata; evolution.

The Curious Trial of the Durham boy.

In 1834 Major Mitchell, a nine year old boy from Durham, Maine, was arrested and brought to trial for assault and battery on a schoolmate. His attorney, John Neal, offered an unusual defense which argued that due to an injury to Major’s phrenological faculty of “destructiveness” occurring in his infancy that he should not be held responsible for his crime. Although Major was found guilty and imprisoned, the defense was one of the earliest examples of what today would be called an insanity defense, a stratagem which strives to free a defendant of criminal responsibility due to mental defect or disease

Beyond Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action: Should Strict Products Liability Be the Next Frontier for Water Contamination Lawsuits?

This Article explores the yet unexplored—the viability of strict products liability against sellers of contaminated water. Part I sets the factual context for the Article, briefly describing the nature and scope of this nation’s groundwater contamination problem, and explains why, though historically ignored, strict products liability may figure prominently in current and future water contamination litigation. Part II sets the legal context for the Article, very briefly outlining the evolution of strict products liability from its birth in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc., through its maturation as urged in the recent Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability (hereafter Restatement Third). Part III then analyzes whether each of the necessary elements of a strict products liability cause of action is sufficiently satisfied to warrant its application to the sale of contaminated water. Part III concludes that contaminated water is properly characterized as a manufacturing defect and thus subjects the seller of the water to strict liability. Part IV traces the historical public policy foundations for imposing strict liability and explores whether its application to the sale of contaminated water furthers or undermines the interests sought to be advanced or protected by strict products liability. Part V then highlights the critical importance of quality control as a pivotal public policy factor in strict products liability. While the absence of quality control as a public policy factor in the design and warning defect context has allowed a return to a negligence-based liability scheme, quality control remains central to the continued application of strict liability in the manufacturing defect context. Part V then illustrates the importance of quality control through a series of graphs depicting the impact of quality control decisions on the number of expected manufacturing defects and their consequential costs. Part V also explains that the almost uniformly-recognized unfairness of imposing strict liability on manufacturers of products containing unforeseeable defects in the design and warning defect contexts also exists in the manufacturing defect context in numerous instances. To remedy that unfairness, Part VI proposes a new affirmative defense to manufacturing defect liability applicable when there is an unforeseeable defect in the product that is not reasonably traceable to the quality control levels set by the manufacturer. Finally, Part VI illustrates the application of the proposed quality control affirmative defense by applying the defense to the facts of A Civil Action and Erin Brockovich

Restore Colorado\u27s Repair Doctrine for Construction- Defect Claims

The repair doctrine is a common law defense to statutes of limitations. It protects defective product and property buyers who delay suit due to sellers\u27 promises to make repairs. Recently, in Smith v. Executive Custom Homes, the Colorado Supreme Court rejected the repair doctrine for construction-defect claims due to an apparent redundancy between the doctrine and the notice-and-opportunity-to repair provision of Colorado\u27s Construction Defect Action Reform Act. This Note explains why Smith was wrongly decided

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood: The European Community Stays on the Path to Strict Liability

Part I of this Note will briefly outline Community policy on product liability as detailed by the Product Liability Directive, then review the development of product liability law in various Member States of the European Community. Part II will analyze how the concept of state-of-the-art highlighted tensions between a strict liability regime and a negligence regime in U.S. product liability. It will then review similar discord in the European Community caused by the development risk defense. Finally, Part III of this Note will argue that in contrast to the United States, the European Community has thus far chosen to stay true to the strict product liability label in its implementation of the development risk defense

Reconsidering the Battered Woman Syndrome Defense for Women Who Kill

This paper considers two possible alterations to the current use of Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) as a defense for the criminal act of murder. First, I will argue that BWS is best used as an excuse defense for murder. In the United States, BWS has historically been used as a justification defense for victims of long-term domestic violence who kill their abusers. A justification defense attempts to show that the criminal defendant’s action was warranted and justified while an excuse defense is meant to show that the criminal defendant is not fully responsible for her actions due to some mental disease or defect. I believe that BWS should be used as an excuse defense for murder because there is a significant amount of research linking BWS to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and PTSD is currently accepted as an excuse defense for criminal action. Second, I will argue that one way to formulate BWS as an excuse defense is to name BWS in the DSM-VI as a sub-category of PTSD. I will also argue that the neural correlates of BWS are discoverable and the presentation of neural evidence will support BWS as a genuine psychological condition and excuse defense

How mothers handle their feelings toward children with congenital anomalies: a study of cases seen in psychiatry department of the children's medical center

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit