Product Liability, Advertising Ethics, and Key Workplace Rights

Posted on Oct 1, 2025 in Law & Jurisprudence

Consumer Safety and Product Liability

Key Legal Concepts in Product Liability

MacPherson v. Buick Motor Car Case: Expanded the liability of manufacturers for injuries caused by defective products.
Due Care: The idea that consumers and sellers do not meet as equals, and that consumers’ interests are particularly vulnerable to harm by the manufacturer, who possesses knowledge and expertise the consumer lacks.
Caveat Emptor: Latin phrase meaning, “Let the buyer beware.”

Strict Product Liability and Utilitarianism

Strict Product Liability: Holds that the manufacturer of a product has legal responsibilities to compensate the user of that product for injuries suffered because a defective condition made it unreasonably dangerous, even though the manufacturer was not negligent in permitting that defect to occur.

The argument for strict liability is basically utilitarian, focusing on maximizing overall safety and minimizing societal costs associated with injuries.

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC): A federal agency established to protect the public against unreasonable risks of injury associated with consumer products.

Consumer Choice, Regulation, and Paternalism

Consumer Choice: Economists worry that preventing individuals from balancing safety against price is inefficient. Philosophers worry about interfering with people’s freedom of choice. For example, if a consumer has all the information, should they have the choice regarding the level of regulation they want? Preventing consumers from being able to choose a cheaper but riskier product (like defective cars or seatbelt beeping) can have both economic and ethical drawbacks.

Legal Paternalism: The idea that laws may justifiably be used to restrict the freedom of individuals for their own good. For example, requiring you to wear a seatbelt only affects you; however, anti-paternalists would protest that forcing you to wear a seatbelt violates your moral autonomy.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Consumers usually assume that if a product is on the market, especially if it is something they ingest, then it has been certified safe; however, that is often not the case. The FDA regulates food, drugs, and cosmetics.

Warranties and Consumer Trust

Express Warranties: Claims that sellers explicitly state—for example, that a product is shrink-proof or will require no maintenance for two years. There is a moral concern regarding whether or not the product lives up to its billing.
Implied Warranties: Include the claim implicit in any sale that a product is fit for its ordinary intended use. It is not a promise that the product will be perfect; rather, it is a guarantee that it will be of passable quality or suitable for the ordinary purpose for which it is used.

Pricing Practices and Market Fairness

Horizontal Price Fixing: Occurs when competitors agree to adhere to a set price schedule, not to cut prices below a certain minimum, or to restrict price advertising or the terms of sales discounts or rebates. (Note: There is nothing illegal about businesses consciously charging the same prices as their competitors; it is the agreement to do so that violates the law.)
Vertical Price Fixing: Takes place when manufacturers and retailers, as opposed to direct competitors, agree to set prices.
Price Gouging: Better understood as a seller exploiting a short-term situation in which buyers have few purchase options for a much-needed product by raising prices substantially.
Quantity Surcharges: Retailers sell economy-size items for a higher per-unit price than their smaller counterparts. It is a much more widespread phenomenon than most people realize.

Ethical Issues in Advertising

Deceptive Advertising Techniques

Ambiguity: Ads that can be understood in two or more ways can be deceiving.
Weasel Words: Aiding and abetting ambiguity to evade or retreat from a direct or forthright statement. Weasel words are used to imply what cannot be explicitly said.
Puffery: The supposedly harmless use of superlatives and subjective praise in advertisements (e.g., “King of Beers,” “Breakfast of Champions”).
Psychological Appeal: A persuasive effort aimed primarily at emotion, not reason. This is potentially the advertising technique of greatest moral concern because the products rarely fully deliver what the ads promise.
Subliminal Advertising: Advertising that communicates at a level beneath conscious awareness, where some psychologists claim the vast reservoir of human motivation primarily resides.

Regulatory Standards for Advertising

Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Its mandate was expanded to include protecting consumers against deceptive advertising and fraudulent commercial practices.
Reasonable Consumer Standard: Prohibits only advertising claims that would deceive reasonable people. People who are more gullible or less bright than average would be unprotected under this standard.
Gullible Consumer Standard: Prohibits an advertisement that might mislead someone who is ill-informed and naive. If adopted broadly, the FTC would handle many more cases and greatly restrict advertising.

Key Case Example

FTC vs. Standard Education (1937): In this case, an encyclopedia company was charged by the FTC with a number of deceptive and misleading practices.

Economic Theories of Consumption

Consumer Sovereignty: The idea that consumers should and do control the market through their purchases.
Dependence Effect: As a society becomes increasingly affluent, wants are increasingly created by the process by which they are satisfied (e.g., advertising creates the need for the product it sells).

Workplace Ethics and Employee Rights

The Ethics of Polygraph Testing

Polygraph tests are often used as a fast and economical way to verify information provided by a job applicant and to screen candidates for employment.

Three Assumptions of Polygraph Testing:

The first assumption is that lying triggers an involuntary, distinctive response that truth-telling does not.
It is assumed that polygraphs are extraordinarily accurate.
It is assumed they cannot be beaten. (The easiest way to beat the polygraph is by augmenting your response to the control question by some form of covert self-stimulation, like biting your tongue.)

The Problem of False Positives

Polygraphs frequently result in false positives, falsely identifying as liars people who are telling the truth.

Employee Polygraph Protection Act: Prohibits most private employers from using lie detectors in pre-employment testing. Private security firms, drug companies, contractors with certain government agencies, and selected others are exempted from the law. The law permits the use of polygraphs in ongoing investigations of economic loss or injury.

Safety, Risk, and Refusal of Dangerous Work

Assumption of Risk: Voluntary assumption of risk presupposes informed consent. Informed consent entails that employees have a moral right to refuse work when it exposes them to imminent danger, and employers are wrong to reprimand them for doing so.
Right to Refuse Dangerous Work: A legal right granted to employees to decline work that poses an immediate threat to their health or safety.

Moral Concerns Regarding Women in the Workplace

Three primary moral concerns related to gender equality and family leave:

Women have a right to compete on an equal terrain with men. The legal requirement that large firms provide at least unpaid maternity leave and reinstatement respects that right. The question, however, is whether companies should provide paid maternity leave.
The development of our potential capacities is a moral ideal, perhaps even a human right. From that point of view, many would contend that women should not be forced to choose between childbearing and the successful pursuit of their careers.
Addressing the traditional male-female division of labor within the family structure.

Organizational Behavior: The Hawthorne Effect

Hawthorne Effect: The phenomenon where workers produce more because they were receiving attention. Instead of feeling that they were spokes in an organizational wheel, they felt important and recognized.