Introduction--innovation technologique, incertitudes et responsabilites.

• Date: 01 June 2014
• Author: Verges, Etienne

At a 2010 meeting in Grenoble, France, the idea emerged to build an international network of researchers interested in the difficulties posed in the law of civil liability by uncertainties and risks inherent in contemporary science and technology. Teams from McGill University and the University of Grenoble initiated the project and established a network of European and North American academics interested in analyzing the relationship between the law of civil liability and science and technology.

Traditionally, civil liability is a reparation mechanism grounded on wrongdoing. However, from the end of the nineteenth century, the field of civil liability began to undergo transformations in response to accidents tied to emerging technologies--initially developments in transportation and industrialization--for which proof of negligence was often difficult to establish or for which the causal link to the accident remained complex or unknown. Throughout the modern era, science and civil liability have become closely intertwined due to risks tied to innovative technologies, and each discipline has informed the other. Science's rational analysis has contributed certainty to legal decision-making both inside and outside of courtrooms. Civil liability's corresponding contribution to science, however, has traditionally been limited to questions surrounding accidents arising within the ambit of technological risks which are scientifically known, or at least knowable.

Twenty-first century civil liability law is now grappling with the possibility of expanding this scope to also consider uncertain risks and to offer protection to...