IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uerser/34059.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Product Liability And Microbial Foodborne Illness

Author

Listed:
  • Frenzen, Paul D.
  • Buzby, Jean C.
  • Rasco, Barbara

Abstract

This report examines how product liability law treats personal injuries attributed to microbially contaminated foods. The risk of lawsuits stemming from microbial foodborne illness and the resulting court-awarded compensation may create economic incentives for firms to produce safer food. It is not known how many consumers seek compensation for damages from contaminated foods because information about complaints and legal claims involving foodborne illness is not readily accessible, especially for cases that are settled out of court. Reviewing the outcomes of 175 jury trials involving foodborne pathogens, the analysis identifies several factors that influence trial outcomes, while noting that the awards won by plaintiffs tend to be modest.

Suggested Citation

  • Frenzen, Paul D. & Buzby, Jean C. & Rasco, Barbara, 2001. "Product Liability And Microbial Foodborne Illness," Agricultural Economic Reports 34059, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uerser:34059
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.34059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/34059/files/ae010799.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.34059?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daughety, Andrew F & Reinganum, Jennifer F, 1995. "Product Safety: Liability, R&D, and Signaling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1187-1206, December.
    2. Golan, Elise H. & Ralston, Katherine L. & Frenzen, Paul D., 1998. "A Distributional Analysis of the Costs of Foodborne Illness: Who Ultimately Pays?," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 95-107, July.
    3. Buzby, Jean C. & Roberts, Tanya & Lin, Chung-Tung Jordan & MacDonald, James M., 1996. "Bacterial Foodborne Disease: Medical Costs and Productivity Losses," Agricultural Economic Reports 33991, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Viscusi, W Kip, 1993. "The Value of Risks to Life and Health," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1912-1946, December.
    5. Tabarrok, Alexander & Helland, Eric, 1999. "Court Politics: The Political Economy of Tort Awards," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 157-188, April.
    6. Danzon, Patricia M., 2000. "Liability for medical malpractice," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 26, pages 1339-1404, Elsevier.
    7. Kolstad, Charles D & Ulen, Thomas S & Johnson, Gary V, 1990. "Ex Post Liability for Harm vs. Ex Ante Safety Regulation: Substitutes or Complements?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 888-901, September.
    8. Buzby, Jean C. & Fox, John A. & Ready, Richard C. & Crutchfleld, Stephen R., 1998. "Measuring Consumer Benefits of Food Safety Risk Reductions," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 69-82, July.
    9. George L. Priest, 1991. "The Modern Expansion of Tort Liability: Its Sources, Its Effects, and Its Reform," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 31-50, Summer.
    10. JohnE. Calfee & CLifford Winston, 1993. "The Consumer Welfare Effects of Liability for Pain and Suffering: An Exploratory Analysis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 24(1 Microec), pages 133-196.
    11. repec:ags:joaaec:v:30:y:1998:i:1:p:69-82 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Shanley, Michael G, 1991. "The Distribution of Posttrial Adjustments to Jury Awards," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(2), pages 463-481, June.
    13. Carl Shapiro, 1991. "Symposium on the Economics of Liability," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 3-10, Summer.
    14. Low, Stuart & Smith, Janet Kiholm, 1995. "Decisions to Retain Attorneys and File Lawsuits: An Examination of the Comparative Negligence Rule in Accident Law," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 535-557, June.
    15. George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, 1984. "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, January.
    16. Broder, Ivy E & Morrall, John F, III, 1991. "Incentives for Firms to Provide Safety: Regulatory Authority and Capital Market Reactions," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 309-322, December.
    17. Julie A. Caswell & Neal H. Hooker, 1996. "HACCP as an International Trade Standard," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 78(3), pages 775-779.
    18. Theodore Eisenberg, 1991. "The Relationship between Plaintiff Success Rates before Trial and at Trial," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 154(1), pages 111-116, January.
    19. Johnson, Gary V. & Ulen, Thomas S. & Alho, Juha M., 1989. "Optimal Public Policies to Minimize Risks of Genotoxic Harms: A Comparison of the Efficiency of Administrative Agency Regulation and Tort Liability," Research Reports 25163, University of Connecticut, Food Marketing Policy Center.
    20. Posner, Richard A, 1997. "Explaining the Variance in the Number of Tort Suits across U.S. States and between the United States and England," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 477-489, June.
    21. Polinsky, A Mitchell, 1980. "Strict Liability vs. Negligence in a Market Setting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(2), pages 363-367, May.
    22. W. Kip Viscusi, 1996. "Economic Foundations of the Current Regulatory Reform Efforts," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 119-134, Summer.
    23. Litan, Robert E, 1991. "The Safety and Innovation Effects of U.S. Liability Law: The Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 59-64, May.
    24. Gregory B. Rodgers, 1993. "Estimating Jury Compensation for Pain and Suffering in Product Liability Cases Involving Nonfatal Personal Injury," Journal of Forensic Economics, National Association of Forensic Economics, vol. 6(3), pages 251-262, September.
    25. Buzby, Jean C. & Frenzen, Paul D., 1999. "Food safety and product liability," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 637-651, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniel P. Kessler & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 2004. "Empirical Study of the Civil Justice System," NBER Working Papers 10825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Kuchler, Fred & Golan, Elise H., 1999. "Assigning Values To Life: Comparing Methods For Valuing Health Risks," Agricultural Economic Reports 34037, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    3. Bartsch, Elga, 1996. "Enforcement of environmental liability in the case of uncertain causality and asymmetric information," Kiel Working Papers 755, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    4. Steven Shavell, 2005. "Liability for Accidents," NBER Working Papers 11781, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Fraser, Clive D., 1996. "On tort as an implicit insurance system with state-dependent utility: The case of child mortality risk," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 449-459, December.
    6. E. Rouvière & K. Latouche, 2014. "Impact of liability rules on modes of coordination for food safety in supply chains," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 111-130, February.
    7. Cooter, Robert D., 1997. "Commodifying Liability," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt9pq4m8ts, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    8. Sjur Didrik Flåm & Elmar G. Wolfstetter, 2015. "Liability Insurance and Choice of Cars: A Large Game Approach," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(6), pages 943-963, December.
    9. Joshua Schwartzstein & Andrei Shleifer, 2013. "An Activity-Generating Theory of Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(1), pages 1-38.
    10. Yongmin Chen & Jianpei Li & Jin Zhang, 2022. "Efficient Liability In Expert Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1717-1744, November.
    11. Haitian Lu & Hongbo Pan & Chenying Zhang, 2015. "Political Connectedness and Court Outcomes: Evidence from Chinese Corporate Lawsuits," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4).
    12. Álvaro Bustos & Pablo Bravo-Hurtado & Antonio Aninat, 2020. "The (Other) Effects of Restricting Access to Higher Courts: The Case of Wrongful Terminations in Labor Contracts in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 534, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    13. Gérard Mondello, 2013. "Ambiguous Beliefs on Damages and Civil Liability Theories"," Post-Print halshs-00929948, HAL.
    14. Herbert Dawid & Gerd Muehlheusser, 2019. "Smart products: liability, timing of market introduction, and investments in product safety," CESifo Working Paper Series 7673, CESifo.
    15. Robert L. Herrick & Steven G. Buchberger & Robert M. Clark & Margaret Kupferle & Regan Murray & Paul Succop, 2012. "A Markov Model To Estimate Salmonella Morbidity, Mortality, Illness Duration, And Cost," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(10), pages 1169-1182, October.
    16. Chris Rohlfs & Ryan Sullivan & Thomas J. Kniesner, 2016. "Reducing risks in wartime through capital-labor substitution: Evidence from World War II," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 163-190, April.
    17. Sébastien Pouliot & Daniel A. Sumner, 2008. "Traceability, Liability, and Incentives for Food Safety and Quality," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(1), pages 15-27.
    18. Eric Langlais & Maxime Charreire, 2020. "Should environment be a concern for competition policy when firms face environmental liability ?," EconomiX Working Papers 2020-25, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    19. Arbatskaya, Maria & Aslam, Maria Vyshnya, 2018. "Liability or labeling? Regulating product risks with costly consumer attention," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 238-252.
    20. Oger, Raphaelle & Woods, Timothy A. & Jean-Albert, Pierre & Allan, Daniel, 2001. "Food Safety in the U.S. Fruit and Vegetable Industry: Awareness and Management Practices of Producers in Kentucky," Staff Papers 37867, University of Kentucky, Department of Agricultural Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uerser:34059. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ersgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.