Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 107 > Issue 2 (2008)
Abstract
This Essay exposes and analyzes a hitherto overlooked cost of tort law: its adverse effect on innovation. Tort liability for negligence, defective products, and medical malpractice is determined by reference to custom. We demonstrate that courts' reliance on custom and conventional technologies as the benchmark of liability chills innovation and distorts its path. Specifically, recourse to custom taxes innovators and subsidizes replicators of conventional technologies. We explore the causes and consequences of this phenomenon and propose two possible ways to modify tort law in order to make it more welcoming to innovation.
Recommended Citation
Gideon Parchomovsky & Alex Stein,
Torts and Innovation,
107
Mich. L. Rev.
285
(2008).
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol107/iss2/2
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Consumer Protection Law Commons, Evidence Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons, Torts Commons