Word: plaintiff
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...though not the altimeter maker, thus conspicuously dispensing with privity. (Ironically, Mrs. Goldberg decided not to sue Lockheed, simply settled out of court with American Airlines for some $10,000.) In the Goldberg case, relaxing the privity requirement also imposed "strict liability" on the manufacturer. Under this principle, the plaintiff is not obliged to show that the manufacturer lacked foresight or was actually negligent in causing the defect. The plaintiff need only show that the product was faulty and that the injury occurred. In short, consumers are now entitled to assume that more and more products will work safely...
...overly alarmed about the new legal risks, which are still mainly aimed at manufacturers. Manhattan Lawyer Harry H. Lipsig foresees suits against engineers in only two general situations: 1) where the manufacturer has gone out of business, or is financially weaker than the engineering firm; 2) where the plaintiff finds the engineer in a more convenient jurisdiction than the manufacturer, as when a U.S. engineer designs a machine that is then built abroad...
...plaintiff cannot win on mere possibilities. Nor can he rely on common-sense assumptions in situations where only experts are competent to judge causation. In the Deutsch case, for example, the jury was not permitted to assume that brain damage resulted from the repressed birth, and medical testimony was essential. All this makes the plaintiff's burden of proof exceedingly hard to carry when the effect appears long after the cause-for example, in radiation sickness or in lung cancer allegedly caused by cigarettes. Things get really complex when there may be two or more possibly equal causes. Example...
...relieve a plaintiff's intolerable burden of proof in some multiple-cause situations, the courts can hold all of the defendants liable. This may be true even if multiple acts are independent and harmless in themselves-for example, when several defendants deposit in a stream minor impurities that wind up polluting the whole stream. Another possible solution in such cases is to permit the defendants to fight it out among themselves as to what share of the damages each should...
...teen-age boy who then rendered a child paraplegic as the result of a drunken auto accident. When the child's guardian sued the druggist, he had to establish that the liquor sale was not too remote from the accident to constitute "proximate cause." Fortunately for the plaintiff, the Indiana Supreme Court agreed, choosing not to follow decisions in several other states that rejected such claims...