Passage l It's a rough world out there. Step outside and you could break a leg slipping滑倒 on your doormat. Light up the stove and you could burn down the house. Luckily, if the doormat门前擦鞋垫 or stove failed to warn of coming disaster, a successful lawsuit might compensate you for your troubles. Or so the thinking has gone since the early 1980s, when juries began holding more companies liable for their customers' misfortunes. Feeling threatened, companies responded by writing ever-longer warning labels, trying to anticipate every possibLe accident. Today, stepladders carry labels several inches long that warn , among other things, that you might-surprise! --fall off. The label on a child ' s Batman cape cautions that the toy \to fly. \While warnings are often appropriate and necessary--the dangers of drug interactions, for example--and many are required by state or federal regulations, it isn't clear that they actually protect the manufacturers and sellers from liability if a customer is injured. About 50 percent of the companies lose when injured customers take them to court. Now the tide appears to be turning. As personal injury claims continue as before, some courts are beginning to side with defendants, especially in cases where a warning label probably wouldn't have changed anything. In May , Julie Nimmons, president of Schutt Sports in Illinois, successfully fought a lawsuit involving a football player who was paralyzed in a game while wearing a Schutt helmet. \helmets aren' t designed to prevent those kinds of injuries , \nature of the game, not the helmet, was the reason for the athlete's injury. At the same time, the American Law Institute--a group of judges, lawyers, and academics whose recommendations carry substantial weight-issued new guidelines for tort law stating that companies need not warn customers of obvious dangers or bombard them with a lengthy list of possible ones. \can get buried in a sea of trivialities, \professor at Cornell law School who helped draft the new guidelines. If the moderate end of the legal community has its way, the information on products might actually be provided for the benefit of customers and not as protection against legal liability. . 51 . What were things like in 1980s when accidents happened? [A] Customers might be relieved of their disasters through lawsuits. [B] Injured customers could expect protection from the legal system. [C]Companies would avoid being sued by providing new warnings. [D]Juries tended to find fault with the compensations companies promised. 52. Manufacturers as mentioned in the passage tend to__ [A]satisfy customers by writing long warnings on products [B]become honest in describing the inadequacies of their products [C]make the best use of labels to avoid legal liability be__ concern 1. slip滑倒
第一部分 文章背景
3. light up点燃
一下美国的法律架构。
第二部分 语言点详解
2. doormat门前擦鞋垫
[内容分类]社会科学--法律
[C]product labels would eventually be discarded [B]helmets were not designed to prevent injuries 53. The case of Schutt helmet demonstrated that__ 54. The author' s attitude towards the issue seems to [A]some injury claims were no longer supported by law [经典例句] The old lady slipped on a banana skin and broke her leg.
[A] biased [ B] indifferent [ C] puzzling [D]objective [大纲词汇] slip v.滑,滑倒;滑落,滑掉;溜走n.疏忽,小错,口误,笔误
此类法律方面的文章在历年的考试中并不多见,因此考生最好借助阅读本文熟悉
[D]some sports games might lose popularity with athletes [D]feel obliged to view customers' safety as their first river.
亮,照亮
7. jury陪审团
6. lawsuit诉讼
5. warn of警告
4. burn down烧毁
9. anticipate预料
[扩充词汇] lawsuit n.诉讼
[大纲词汇] jury n.陪审团;全体评审员
[扩充词组] burn down烧毁,(使)烧成平地
[大纲词汇] warn v.(of, against)警告,告戒
[大纲词汇] liable a.(for)有责任的,有义务的
[经典例句] He burned down his enemy's house.
8. hold liable for认为···应负有···的责任
[大纲词汇] burn v.燃烧,烧伤,烧毁n.烧伤,灼伤
[经典例句] The jury found the prisoner not guilty.
[经典例句] It is getting dark-time to light up the lamp.
[经典例句] The injured clients brought a lawsuit against the airline.
[经典例句] The judge held the defendant liable for his friend's death.
[经典例句] The notice warned people of danger of walking on the frozen
[大纲词汇] light n.光,光亮,光线;灯,灯光,光源v.点(火),点燃;(使)变