Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Lecture On Engineer & Law
A Lecture On Engineer & 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)