ENGR201 Professional Practice and Responsibility ©
Lesson 10 Podcast Transcript: Responsibility and Liability
Responsibility and the Evolution of Liability
In this podcast, we will discuss what is meant by responsibility and the evolution of
liability in law.
Responsibility
Responsibility can be defined as responding to or answering for an action performed. All
actions that we take have consequences either for ourselves or for other people who
surround us. Now it may not always be possible to foresee the kind of consequences
that may arise from our actions, but in most situations it is possible to know the
consequences of an individual’s actions. Answering or accounting for the consequences
of ones actions is what is implied by responsibility. In order for a person to be held
morally responsible for an action, we should be able to determine two aspects. First, we
need to verify agency of the action, in other words who did the action. Second, we need
to know the degree of wilful intent or in other words, the nature of circumstances that
guided the action. In some situations, the responsibility for the action might be less
because of the nature of circumstances. Fixing these two aspects allows us to fix the
moral responsibility of an action.
A key aspect associated with thinking about responsibility is the concept of role. A role
(especially a social role) is a position that an individual holds. A few such common roles
are parent, student, professor, engineer, doctor, etc. Individuals often fills multiple roles
in society. One could be an engineer who is also a parent. The idea of role is crucial to
understand responsibility. Because if a person fills a role in society, then society has
expectations about how that person should act in that role. Individuals are held
responsible when they do not meet the expectations of the role they fill in society. So if
you are an engineer, there is an expectation that you will act responsibly when
producing products for society. If you do not meet that expectation, you will be held
responsible for it.
Evolution of Liability
When talking about responsibility in the legal context, we encounter the term liability.
Liability can be defined as the responsibility that is backed by the power of the law. In
other words, if you do not meet the expected responsibility in your professional work,
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you could be held liable or legally responsible by the consumer or client for your actions,
especially if it causes damage to them. Liability can be of two types ‒ contractual or
extra-contractual.
1. Extra-contractual : responsibility that is owed by tort or regulatory damages
2. Contractual: responsibility that is owed within the bounds of an explicit contract
In our description of liability, we are mostly concerned with extra-contractual liability. In
the professional context, we are not usually concerned with intentional liability, since we
assume that professionals will act in an ethical fashion. However, negligence is another
matter. We have already discussed some aspects of professional liability arising from
negligent practice in an earlier podcast. We will talk about this in more details in the next
podcast also. Here we will discuss the evolution of product liability or the changes in the
liability associated with goods that are manufactured for society. Till about two hundred
years ago, there was no such thing as product liability. If a buyer bought a product in the
market, it was the buyer who took the risk of buying, and therefore had to bear the price
of any damage done while using it. There was no compensation that a buyer could
expect for damages, caused by a product that they bought. This legal approach is
referred to as “caveat emptor” – let the buyer beware. In the last hundred and fifty
years, legal systems around the world have moved away from a caveat emptor
approach towards an approach that is commonly called “caveat vendidor” – let the seller
beware. With the increasing complexity of products, producers, manufacturers, and
designers are now held legally responsible for the products they introduce in society.
The producer is thus expected to compensate for damages done in the presence of
negligent designs or construction. In the general public interest, product liability in many
countries have moved in the direction of strict liability. Strict liability is the legal
responsibility assigned in the public interest, even in the absence of negligence on the
part of the manufacturer. This has created the responsibility for engineers to not just
make safe products for the intended user, but also consider its effect on all likely uses
and users of products. A good example of strict liability is the message that
manufacturers put on plastic bags that the bags could be a choking hazard for children.
This message is an effort to reduce the strict liability that courts assign to a product.
While strict liability is quite common in U.S., in Canadian courts, strict liability is not
widely enforced.
© May not be copied or duplicated
without the permission of the owner. 2