Question

We begin with an observation regarding toys and torts. (Some of the following comes from an unknown source and some from the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission.) Parker Brothers had big plans for a toy called Riviton. Riviton consisted of plastic parts, rubber rivets and a riveting tool with which children could put together anything from a windmill to an airplane. In the first year on the market, Riviton seemed on its way to becoming one of those classic toys that parents would buy everlastingly. However, one of the 450,000 Riviton sets ended up under the Christmas tree of an 8-year-old boy. He played with it daily for three weeks. Then he put one of the quarter-inch long rubber rivets into his mouth and choked to death. Ten months later, with Riviton sales well on their way to an expected $8.5 million for the year, a second child strangled on a rivet. Parker Brothers could have ignored the strangulations, ascribed the deaths to chance, and tried to shift the blame to parental failure to supervise and police their children at play; or it could have assigned responsibility to the child’s abnormal misuse or abuse of the product. “After all, peanuts are the greatest cause of strangulation among children and nobody advocates the banning of the peanut.” However, when you manufacture for children, you produce for the improvident, the impetuous, and the irresponsible. As a judge put it: “the concept of a prudent child, God forbid, is a grotesque combination.” The motto of childhood seems to be: “when in doubt, eat it.” Knowledge of such childish propensity is imputed to all manufacturers who produce products, especially toys, which are intended for the use of or exposure to children. Cases abound to document this axiom.

Question:

Considering the many stakeholders of a firm and the legal setting sketched above, what is the proper response for the ethical dilemma in the text?

Answer 1