Teresa Fels asks what Jason and Ken Parish think about the issues raised by the Esso class action which is about to commence, but I’ll take her invitation as general. In this piece, which was mainly devoted to debunking the Y2K bug (remember that?), I made the case for strict liability in the case of privatised (or for that matter, corporatised) monopoly suppliers of infrastructure services. Key para:

The case for corporatisation and privatisation is based on the assumption that the profit motive is the best guide to efficient outcomes. If this is the case, then we will get as much safety and reliability as is profitable. Assuming the suppliers of services have better information than anyone else, this means they should be absolutely liable for the consequences of any systems failure, without a requirement to prove negligence. Absolute liability is the criterion that prevails, for practical purposes, in the United States, which is the model for private provision of infrastructure services. If we import US institutions like private electricity companies, we must also import the legal institutions, such as aggressive litigation, that keep those companies honest.