Concert of Action by Substantial Assistance: What Ever Happened to Unconscious Aiding and Abetting

As one commentator has uncomfortably noted, in the 1980's, courts seemed inclined to develop and use theories of liability, which ensured that the risk of injury and loss was transferred from consumer victims to manufacturers and then, through the price mechanism, to the community-at-large. That was a time when courts seemed to be comfortable applying product liability without fault, and holding manufacturers as "insurers even for those products, which previously would not have been considered 'defective' in design, in manufacture, or in marketing."2 Products liability, in the ensuing decade, has lost its nerve,3 or more accurately, the courts charged with responsibility to do justice in such circumstances have scaled the doctrine back, as well as some of the collateral doctrines necessary to accomplish its objectives.