Legal Standardization in the New National Culture
Legal standardization - abolition of traditional tort immunities:
Haynes v Presbyterian Hospital Assn. – Iowa, 1950 (45 N.W.2d 151); Parker v Port Huron Hospital – Michigan, 1960 (105 N.W.2d 1); Williams v City of Detroit – Michigan, 1961 (111 N.W.2d 1); Enghauser Manufacturing Co. v Eriksson Engineering Ltd. – Ohio, 1983 (451 N.E.2d 228)
“[Public policy] is not quiescent but active. A policy adopted today as being in the public good, unlike the Ten Commandments, is not necessarily an ever enduring thing. As times and prospectives change, so changes the policy. … No doubt, at the outset of the theory, the need for charity in the way of treatment of the suffering, was urgent and the general good of society demanded encouragement thereof. … There was little, if any, paternal care granted by the state. The granting of immunity from liability for the negligence of their employees may have been proper as a basis for encouraging such charity.”- Justice Norman Hays, in Haynes
Legal Standardization – Adoption of strict product liability: Spence v. Three Rivers Builders & Masonry Supply, Inc. – Michigan, 1958 (90 N.W.2d 873); Suvada v. White Motor Co. – Illinois, 1965, (210 N.E.2d 182); Lonzrick v. Republic Steel Corp. – Ohio, 1966 (218 N.E.2d 185)
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| Uniform Commercial Code (courtesy Wikimedia Commons) “The question is not ‘Should we?’; it is ‘How may the body [of governmental immunity] be interred judicially with non-discriminatory last rites?’ … Surely, with the passage of years, today’s question is become a game of quasi-legal basketball with legislators and judges tossing the sphere back and forth with neither making visible effort to loop it for decisive result. It is time one branch or the other act affirmatively and, since the legislature with over-borrowed time has done nothing, this Court should force the issue as other courts have done and are now doing.” -Justice Eugene Black, in Williams
“[I]t seems obvious that public interest in human life and health, the invitations and solicitations to purchase the product and the justice of imposing the loss on the one creating the risk and reaping the profit are present and as compelling in cases involving motor vehicles and other products, where the defective condition makes them unreasonably dangerous to the user, as they are in food cases.” -Justice Byron House, in Suvada “[Strict liability] would make the manufacturer and seller of a product … an insurer without limit of any damage proximately caused by a defect existing in his product at the time of its sale, even though no amount of care could have eliminated that defect, even though such manufacturer made no representation about his product to anyone, and even though no one knew that it was his product.” - Justice Kingsley Taft (dissenting), in Lonzrick |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 5. MIDWEST LEGAL HISTORY > 5.5. The Midwest, 1925-1965: Depression, War and a New National Culture > 5.5.1. The Midwest, 1925-1965: Struggling With the Depression > 5.5.2. The Midwest, 1925-1965: Unemployment Compensation and Fair Competition > 5.5.3. The Midwest, 1925-1965: Jim Crow in the Midwest >