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...after futilely yanking the lawn mower's starter cord 15 times. A Philadelphia jury found that the mower's exhaust valve failed to meet the manufacturer's own specifications, hindering start-up to the extent that the rope indeed had to be pulled with excessive force. The jury did award $1,750,000, but the case was subsequently settled for an undisclosed amount...
...hand, which was almost severed. The dryer's maker had a patent on a device that would have stopped the dryer automatically if it began to vibrate excessively, but had declined to install the device on the dryer because of the cost. Oddly, in this case the actual award, $1,260,000, exceeded the figure usually quoted, but the lawyers point out that the common account of the case ignores the dryer manufacturer's failure to install the protective device...
Another legal concept being used ever more widely is that of strict liability, which makes possible an award of damages without any proof of negligence. Initially it was applied, for example, to businesses conducting abnormally dangerous activities. Now it has been expanded to product-liability cases: a plaintiff need not prove that the manufacturer of a product was negligent, only that the plaintiff was injured while using the product in the manner intended...
...violence was triggered by the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, accused of treason against the state. His trial, exile to Devil's Island and exoneration have been retailed in countless volumes and films; the most celebrated, The Life of Emile Zola, won an Academy Award for best picture in 1937. But The Affair manages to invest the drama with renewed pity and urgency. French Professor Jean-Denis Bredin is not content with a toneless recapitulation; the dark background is carefully illuminated, and the major characters and walk-ons are given full dimension, including, at times, the homosexual flirtations of spies...
Hailed at 17 as the "Chinese Elizabeth Taylor," she was the most popular actress in the People's Republic and the winner of the Oscar-like Hundred Flower award. Two years later, Joan Chen left her homeland ostensibly to study English literature at UCLA. But she stayed, married a Chinese American and pursued a U.S. career in a succession of lackluster television roles. Now Chen, 23, has finally got her big break, the part of the innocent yet scheming beauty, May-May, in the film adaptation of James Clavell's Tai-Pan. The movie just finished shooting on location...