Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 An introduction to the UK legal system
- 3 An introduction to medical ethics
- 4 Rights, and the Human Rights Act, 1998
- 5 Consent
- 6 Negligence
- 7 Confidentiality, and access to medical records
- 8 Abortion
- 9 Products liability
- 10 Research
- 11 Death and organ procurement
- 12 Professional regulation
- 13 Resource allocation
- Appendix: Important legal cases
- Index
9 - Products liability
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 An introduction to the UK legal system
- 3 An introduction to medical ethics
- 4 Rights, and the Human Rights Act, 1998
- 5 Consent
- 6 Negligence
- 7 Confidentiality, and access to medical records
- 8 Abortion
- 9 Products liability
- 10 Research
- 11 Death and organ procurement
- 12 Professional regulation
- 13 Resource allocation
- Appendix: Important legal cases
- Index
Summary
The field of products liability is a large and specialised area of legal practise. In the context of perioperative medicine, products liability is concerned with the following questions:
Who is liable when a faulty product is alleged to have caused harm to a patient?
Can a defendant in a case of negligence claim that faulty equipment contributed to the harm caused to a patient?
ETHICS
In spite of developments in the law to protect consumers against negligence, highly publicised cases arising from the use of defective products (e.g. silicon breast implants, Bjork–Shiley heart valves) have brought pressure on successive governments to reform the law concerning products liability.
A key turning point came with the Thalidomide tragedy of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Thalidomide was marketed as a treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women, but hundreds of babies worldwide were born with varying degrees of phocomelia or abnormally developed limbs, as an unforeseen side effect of the drug. As the tort of negligence relies on demonstrating fault and foreseeable harm, it was very difficult for claimants at the time to recover damages against manufacturers. Naturally, these events gave rise to considerable public concern. There was an understandable perception that a great injustice had been perpetrated in these circumstances, without any possibility of the injustice being righted or prevented by the law.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004