历年考研英语阅读理解1999年01

[00:03.78]1999 Passage1 [00:11.56]It's a rough world out there. [00:13.67]Step outside and you could break a leg [00:16.32]slipping on your doormat. [00:18.20]Light up the stove [00:19.59]and you could burn down the house. [00:22.66]Luckily, if the doormat or stove failed to warn [00:26.29]of coming disaster, a successful lawsuit [00:29.30]might compensate you for your troubles. [00:31.83]Or so the thinking has gone since the early 1980s, [00:36.26]when juries began holding more companies liable [00:39.38]for their customers' misfortunes. [00:42.71]Feeling threatened, companies responded [00:45.13]by writing ever-longer warning labels, [00:47.90]trying to anticipate every possible accident. [00:51.64]Today, stepladders carry labels several inches long [00:55.97]that warn, among other things, [00:58.18]that you might-surprise! --fall off. [01:01.72]The label on a child's Batman cape cautions [01:04.66]that the toy "does not enable user to fly." [01:09.59]While warnings are often appropriate and necessary [01:13.72]--the dangers of drug interactions, for example [01:17.12]--and many are required by state [01:19.14]or federal regulations, it isn't clear [01:22.24]that they actually protect the manufacturers [01:25.55]and sellers from liability if a customer is injured. [01:29.88]About 50 percent of the companies lose [01:32.51]when injured customers take them to court. [01:36.14]Now the tide appears to be turning. [01:38.65]As personal injury claims continue as before, [01:42.19]some courts are beginning to side with defendants, [01:45.52]especially in cases where a warning label [01:48.19]probably wouldn't have changed anything. [01:51.22]In May, Julie Nimmons, president of Schutt Sports [01:55.06]in Illinois, successfully fought a lawsuit [01:58.20]involving a football player [02:00.18]who was paralyzed in a game [02:01.99]while wearing a Schutt helmet. [02:04.42]"We're really sorry he has become paralyzed, [02:07.34]but helmets aren't designed to prevent [02:09.35]those kinds of injuries," says Nimmons. [02:12.75]The jury agreed that the nature of the game, [02:15.81]not the helmet, was the reason for the athlete's injury. [02:19.74]At the same time, the American Law Institute [02:23.48]--a group of judges, lawyers, and academics [02:26.80]whose recommendations carry substantial weight [02:29.93]--issued new guidelines for tort law stating [02:33.13]that companies need not warn customers of obvious dangers [02:37.78]or bombard them with a lengthy list of possible ones. [02:42.02]"Important information can get buried [02:44.36]in a sea of trivialities," [02:47.09]says a law professor at Cornell law School [02:50.00]who helped draft the new guidelines. [02:52.53]If the moderate end of the legal community [02:54.74]has its way, the information on products [02:57.27]might actually be provided for the benefit of customers [03:01.17]and not as protection against legal liability.

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