assuming as I shall that the 1. clause of crp is inapplicable to ann case that is assuming that toolsinc did not ofter a warranty covering case like ann ann case does not satisty crp yet according to sl toolsinc is nonetheless liable for ann harm yet at first blush crp seems extremely plausible hence it seems natural to conclude that sl is unjust suppose for example that jack is a member of the audience at a philosophical presentation by jill and that he is shot in the leg by a stray bullet during the course of jill talk and suppose further that jill did not voluntarily agree to take responsibility for any such harms and that jack being shot was in no way the result of anything jill did wrong in such a case any attempt by jack to hold jill responsible and thus obligated to pay his resulting medical billa would be outrageous and note in particular that this remains outrageous even if he can demonstrate a causal connection between jill doing and his harm(he demonstrates for example that he would not have been shot had he not been in this room and that he would not have been in this room had jill not prepared a talk that he thought would be interesting)the only way for jack to justity holding jill responsible it seem reasonable to say would to be show that his harm resulted from jill doing something wrong otherwise holding jill responsible is an injustice to jill similarly critics of strict liability contend holding companies liable when they have done nothing wrong is an injustice to them the argument that strict liability is unjust to companies because it violates crp I shall call the conditions of responsibility argument cra cra will be the focus of the remainder of my essay in the next section I shall consider the standard legal defenses of sl as well as two recent philosophical defenses and attempt to show that none of these defenses provides a successful response to cra in the final section I will give my own argument against cra an argument that of course I think succeeds
the two main legal defenses of sl defenses provided at least implicitly in judicial rulings are what I shall call the make the company shape up argument sua and the distribute the burden argument dba according to sua sl is justified by the fact that it will force companies to make safer products a company that knows it will be held liable for any