Marie-Ève Arbour*
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McGill Law Journal — Revue de droit de McGill PORTRAIT OF DEVELOPMENT RISK AS A YOUNG DEFENCE Marie-Ève Arbour* Since its (recent) insertion into the vocab- Depuis son insertion (récente) dans la ulary of jurists, development risk has piqued langue des juristes, le risque de développement the curiosity of experts in defective products li- suscite la curiosité des experts de la responsabi- ability. An investigation into development risk’s lité du fait des produits défectueux. Pourtant, scope and reach, however, requires a compara- une reconstruction de sa portée et de son éten- tive analysis that brings out the issues it raises due ne semble pouvoir s’effectuer qu’au prix and the ambiguities it has occasioned. In this d’une analyse comparative destinée à mettre en light, this article draws support from abundant relief les enjeux qu’il soulève et les ambiguïtés doctrine, and, perhaps paradoxically, scant ju- qu’il fait naître. Dans cette optique, la présente risprudence on the subject, in an effort to contribution prend appui sur l’abondante doc- sketch, in broad strokes, a contemporary por- trine à son sujet, et, peut-être paradoxalement, trait of development risk. la rare jurisprudence l’ayant abordé, afin d’esquisser, à grands traits, un portrait contem- porain du risque de développement. * Professor of civil law, Laval University (Québec). I am particularly thankful to Lara Khoury and Etienne Vergès for their outstanding endeavour and to my peer reviewers for their thorough and helpful comments. I would also like to acknowledge the stimulat- ing hospitality I encountered amidst the books and shelves of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London) and the European University Institute (Florence). This article builds upon ideas expressed by the author in “Itinéraire du risque de dé- veloppement à travers des codes et des constitutions” in Benoît Moore, ed, Mélanges: Jean-Louis Baudouin (Cowansville, Que: Yvon Blais, 2012) 677 and “Rischi da svilup- po” in Elio Sgreccia & Antonio Tarantino, eds, Enciclopedia di Bioetica e Scienza giu- ridica (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane) [in press]. Only in occasion of proofread- ing was I capable of referring to Richard Goldberg’s outstanding monograph Medicinal Product Liability and Regulation (Oxford: Hart, 2013) (especially Chapter 8, “The De- velopment Risk Defence and Medicinal Products”). The overall relevancy of this piece is therefore largely underestimated. © Marie-Eve Arbour 2014 Citation: (2014) 59:4 McGill LJ 913 — Référence : (2014) 59 : 4 RD McGill 913 914 (2014) 59:4 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL — REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL Introduction 915 I. The Territories of the Development Risk Defence 917 A. Supranational Moulds and Pathways 917 B. Of National Clones, Mutants, and Hybrids 924 II. Knowledge or Uncertainty? The Methodology Maze 927 A. The Domain of Knowledge: Existing Data and Accessibility 927 B. The “Whom” Question 929 C. “Enabling”, Discovery, and Business Ethics 930 D. Eppur si muove ... (Thou Shall Dissent) 936 Conclusion 940 THE DEVELOPMENT RISK DEFENCE 915 Introduction It is no secret to anyone familiar with tort law that product liability has become an extensive, globally recognized area of private law.1 The same can be said of the (in)famous development risk defence (DRD),2 which precludes product liability whenever “the inherent risk of a defec- tive product [is] undiscoverable at the time of supply by a manufacturer.”3 Fuelled by the desire to enhance the “long-term social good”4, the DRD is said to foster innovation by shielding industries from liability stemming from defective products born of research and development (R&D) in cases where the risk was not discoverable in light of accessible scientific knowledge at the time the product was put onto the market.5 Conceptual- ly distinct from the state-of-the-art defence6 (which speaks the language of negligence),7 the extension of such immunity from liability to producers 1 See Mathias Reimann, “Liability for Defective Products at the Beginning of the Twenty- First Century: Emergence of a Worldwide Standard?” (2003) 51:4 Am J Comp L 751; Marie-Eve Arbour, Fragments de droit québécois et canadien (Cowansville, Que: Yvon Blais, 2012) at 238. 2 Albeit relevant in the world of common law, this concept does not properly fit in the ci- vilian tradition, where “defences” are unknown and are instead embedded in the dialec- tic of “fault” and its variations. I nonetheless refer to the DRD as a defence because it is a legal transplant that intervenes after a defect has been established, and as such this appears to be the least confusing approach. 3 Richard Goldberg, Causation and Risk in the Law of Torts: Scientific Evidence and Me- dicinal Product Liability (Oxford: Hart, 1999) at 224 [Goldberg, Causation and Risk]. See also Richard Goldberg, “The Development Risk Defence and Medicinal Products” in Medicinal Product Liability and Regulation (Oxford: Hart, 2013) 168. 4 Jane Stapleton, Product Liability (London: Butterworth, 1994) at 225 [Stapleton, Prod- uct Liability]. 5 The EU-style exoneration clause is defined in EC, Council Directive 85/374/EEC of 25 July 1985 on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning liability for defective products, [1985] OJ L 210/29, art 7(e) [PL Directive]. 6 The defence emerged in the US at the dawn of the 1970s. Although the landmark case on this issue was Beshada v Johns-Manville Products Corp (447 A (2d) 539, 90 NJ 191 (1982)), a stream of cases had already set the stage for it to be considered by courts. See e.g. Suter v San Angelo Foundry & Machine, 406 A (2d) 140, 81 NJ 150 (1979) (observ- ing that “the state of the art refers not only to the common practice and standards in the industry but also to other design alternatives within practical and technological lim- its at the time of distribution” at 151 [cited to A (2d)]). 7 Although similar in effect, the state-of-the-art defence is linked to the subjective fore- seeability of risk by the producers, while the DRD revolves around objectively evaluated knowledge. As such, the EU-style defence relates more to the type of risk than to the producer’s behaviour. See Stapleton, Product Liability, supra note 4 at 225. The DRD therefore shifts away from the economic dimension embedded within the state-of-the- art defence, as “total lack of experience makes it impossible to foresee such risks and to make estimates regarding the probability of accidents” (Göran Skogh, “Development 916 (2014) 59:4 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL — REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL amounts to a state in which victims of this type of defective product are, at best, dependent on other legal categories and causes of action in order to obtain compensation (contractual warranty, vice caché, negligence, faute, culpa, dangerous activity, etc.) or, at worst, left to themselves in a situation perhaps reminiscent of the pre-industrial caveat emptor para- digm fiercely criticized by PL scholars.8 Despised and glorified, adopted and rejected, transplanted, transposed, and altered, much has been said— mostly in Europe9 but also in Quebec10—about this immunity from liabil- ity that polarizes commentators along a left-right divide. Risks, Strict Liability, and the Insurability of Industrial Hazards” (1998) 23:87 The Ge- neva Papers on Risk and Insurance 247 at 248). 8 The economic analysis of law (EAL) has greatly contributed to the idea that personal in- jury damages must be borne by the enterprises responsible for putting the product on the market. See e.g. Guido Calabresi, “Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts” (1961) 70:4 Yale LJ 499 (“[n]ot charging an enterprise with a cost which arises from it leads to an understatement of the true cost of producing its goods; the re- sult is that people purchase more of those goods than they would want if their true cost were reflected in price” at 514). 9 In the civilian world, see Pascal Oudot, Le risque de développement: Contribution au maintien du droit à réparation (Dijon: Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2005); Michel Cannarsa, La responsabilité du fait des produits défectueux (Milan: Giuffrè, 2005); Yvan Markovits, La directive C.E.E. du 25 juillet sur la responsabilité du fait des produits dé- fectueux (Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1990) at para 226ff; Jean-Sébastien Borghetti, La responsabilité du fait des produits (Paris: Librairie géné- rale de droit et de jurisprudence, 2004) at 397ff; Agnese Querci, “Il rischio da sviluppo: Origini ed evoluzioni nella moderna ‘società del rischio’” [Development Risk: Origins and Evolutions in Modern ‘Risk Society’] (2012) Danno e responsabilità (Special Issue: I 25 anni di products liability) 31; Pablo Salvador Coderch & Antoni Rubí Puig, “Riesgos del desarrollo y demarcación judicial de la buena ciencia” [Development Risks and Ju- dicial Delimitation of Good Science] (UC Berkeley: Berkeley Program in Law and Economics, Latin American and Caribbean Law and Economics Association (ALACDE) Annual Papers, 2008). In the common law tradition, see Mark Mildred, “The Develop- ment Risks Defence” in Duncan Fairgrieve, ed, Product Liability in Comparative Per- spective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 167; Christopher Hodges, “De- velopment Risks: Unanswered Questions” (1998) 61:4 Mod L Rev 560; Simon Whit- taker, Liability for Products: English Law, French Law, and European Harmonization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Stapleton, Product Liability, supra note 4. In comparative law, see Cees van Dam, European Tort Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) at art 1410. 10 See Nathalie Vézina, “L’exonération fondée sur l’état des connaissances scientifiques et techniques, dite du ‘risque de développement’: Regard sur un élément perturbateur dans le droit québécois de la responsabilité du fait des produits” in Pierre-Claude La- fond, ed, Mélanges Claude Masse: En quête de justice et d’équité (Cowansville, Que: Yvon Blais, 2003) 433.