Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Lecture On Engineer 0 Law
A Lecture On Engineer 0 Law
A Lecture On Engineer 0 Law
1. Breach of contract
2. Committing a tort, e.g., fraud,
negligence
What is a Contract?
• A contract is an exchange of promises
between two or more parties to do, or
refrain from doing, an act which is
enforceable in a court of law
• Consideration
• Legal capacity
• Legality
• Formalities
Offer and acceptance
• One party must make an offer and the other
party must accept that exact offer for a contract
to be formed
• For example:
• Confidentiality agreements
Breach of contract
• Professional Negligence:
❑ Good intentions are not enough.
❑ Even corporate employees can be sued.
• Product liability
Negligence: A Case Study
Tom Swift, P. E., was hired by MicroCom Corp. to
recommend the equipment needed to convert a
certain product line (PDA) from metal to plastic
parts without affecting the production rate. After
$10M of new equipment was installed, it was
found that the new production line would operate
at only 70% of the old production rate because
Mr. Swift did not take into account the longer
cycle time for plastic curing in his design.
Product Liability
• From 1995 to 1996, personal injury
product liability civil lawsuits in federal
courts increased 116%. (quoted from Dieter,
2000)
• Strict Product Liability: A manufacturing or
design defect is sufficient to create a
liability even though no professional
negligence was involved or even when the
injured party acted carelessly.
Design Aspects of Product Liability
✓Strict adherence to standards
✓Thorough testing
✓Quality control measures
✓Process documentation
✓Warning labels and instruction manuals
✓Formal design review before production
✓Liability insurance
Products Liability Law for Technical
Professionals
• Overview of federal and state court systems
• Overview of products liability liability
– Negligence
– Tortuous Misrepresentation
– Warranties
– Strict Liability
• Defects
– Manufacturing Defects
– Design Defects
– Warning Defects
– What Technical Professionals can do to identify defects
• Causation
– Cause in fact
– Proximate cause
• Defenses
Example Case: Hollister v. Dayton Hudson
Corp. 201 F.3d 731 (6th Cir. 2000)
• Facts
– A woman was severely burned when her shirt ignited upon contact with electric burner
– Experts A opined that fabric was unreasonably flammable (fabric was 100 % rayon,
loosely woven with 1.5 denier threads)
– Expert A tested exemplar fabrics and showed that fabric ignited instantly and shirt
consumed completely within six seconds.
– Expert B offered no opinion to use of different fabric
– Fabric passed Consumer Products Safety commission minimum tests for flammability
• Legal Issue
– Was the shirt unreasonably dangerous, or
– did the shirt fail to carry a warning as to its extreme flammability?
• Legal Rule
– Plaintiff must establish that 1) the product was sold in a defective condition, and 2)
defect caused her injury
• Conclusion
– Product not itself defective
– Prima facie case established that lack of adequate warnings made the product defective
– Case should have gone to jury on defective warning cause of action
What do Technical Professionals
learn from this exercise?
• How their decisions are scrutinized in our
legal system
• The role they play in
– preventing damages and resulting litigation
– expert opinions in litigation and litigation
support, and
– developing legal doctrine and social policies.
Contract and Tort Law
Areas of Law of Potential
Professional Liability for Computer
Scientists
• Contract Law
• Tort Law
Elements of a Compensable
Breach of Contract
• Existence of a contract
• Aggravated damages – awarded for the manner in which the contract was
breached causing additional harm (e.g., contract breach occurs in manner
that causes mental distress)