The Gun and the Paperweight: Risk Control Services and Disservices

Abstract Suppose a legal rule makes it negligent to have a loaded gun out in the open in a place of business. Should a defendant who violated this rule by using a loaded gun as a paperweight be liable for his client’s broken toes when the gun falls onto her foot? Problems manifesting this basic structure have occupied scholars and Restatement reporters for decades. In this essay, I reframe untaken precautions as a bundle of risk control services, each of which counteracts a particular risky element, like “shooting capacity” or “heaviness” in the case of the gun. Tort law ought to induce actors to produce all, and only, the risk control services that are worth the cost of providing. Cashing out that prescription is tricky because precautions often jointly provide multiple risk mitigation services, and more than one precaution may meet the legal standard. Nonetheless, the task becomes tractable if we examine the cost structure of precautions — and, analogizing to break-even analysis for products, identify which risk control services contribute to rather than detract from a precaution’s bottom line. The risk services framework partially redeems but also revises harm-within-the-risk and negligence per se doctrines that limit negligence liability based on the type of danger or category of victim involved in a given accident. By enabling us to assess which ostensible risk control services are really societal disservices, this approach provides a firmer basis for calibrating the scope of liability.