Don’t Kill the Messenger ’Till You Read the Message: Products Liability Verdicts in Six California Counties, 1970-1990

Abstract

Products liability is a controversial area. This article seeks to inform the policy debate over tort reform through a case study of products liability jury verdicts in the superior courts of six California counties over a 21-year period (1970-90). Products liability litigation is not a random, incoherent, and chaotic phenomenon. Instead, the article suggests that there are persistent, intelligible patterns to products liability verdicts and that those patterns organize themselves around the settings in which injuries occur. These patterns, in effect, define a number of self-ordering and adaptive subsystems within products liability, each with unique characteristics and trends. These patterns also suggest a complex link between the products liability system and other systems of injury compensation and safety regulation.