As the complexity and sophistication of robotic products increases, so too will increase the cost of proving liability. This cost will effectively close the courthouse doors to many who are injured. Manufacturers, through talking heads on TV, economic experts, pundits and so on are likely to lobby the public, the congress and state legislatures (a) on the need for immunities from suit to "protect jobs" (that probably have been exported to foreign countries) or to protect the "industry" so we don't fall behind other countries in robot production; or (b) they will seek the creation of additional procedural hurdles in the court systems and legal process to make it impossible for an injured person to hold a corporate manufacturer responsible before a jury.
New remedies or procedures will be needed to level the playing field so that economics alone do not dictate who can bring a lawsuit. The time may have come for the cost of proving liability to be included in the damages that are recoverable by an injured party who wins at trial after having made a settlement offer which was less than the jury verdict.
Without some mechanism to offset the cost barrier to holding such manufacturers responsible for the injuries they cause and to encourage them to have adequate levels of insurance coverage, their licenses to manufacture complex and sophisticated robotic devices will become, thanks to the high cost of litigation, licenses to maim and kill. That would be a world like the Empire Luke Skywalker fought against. It will be a world where the court system serves the powerful at the expense of the individual. In the rush to a future where R2Ds and C3POs move among us, let us not forget that it is the individual who is paramount, because when the individual is protected, each and every one of us is protected; but when it is the wealthy and powerful who are protected, then the rest of us live in danger.
In the movie Ghostbusters, the ghostbusters' advertising slogan asked - who you gonna call? As we move forward into a world with increasingly complex products, we need to remember this question and be sure that the justice system keeps the court house doors open to individuals injured by sophisticated and complex products of all kinds.
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