1999 Passage 1
It's a rough world out there. Step outside and you could break a leg slipping on your doormat. Light up the stove and you could burn down the house. Luckily, if the doormat or stove failed to warn ing disaster, a essful lawsuit pensate you for your troubles. Or so the thinking has gone since the early 1980s, when juries began holding panies liable for their customers' misfortunes.
外面是一个危险的世界。如果你走出去,可能会滑倒在门垫上,摔伤一条腿。如果你点燃炉灶,可能会把房子烧掉。但是假如门垫或炉灶上没有警示语告诉你可能发生的危害,那么你或许可以就自己所受的伤害通过法律诉讼,成功地获得赔偿。大约自80年代初以来人们就这样认为了,当时陪审团已开始认为更多的公司应对其顾客所遭受的不幸负责。
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 — surprised! — fall off. The label on a child's Batman cape cautions that the toy "does not enable user to fly."
公司因此感到了威胁,便做出了反应,写出越来越长的警示标识语,力图预料种种可能发生的事故。现在,梯子上警告标签有几英寸长,除了警告你其他可能发生的意外情况外,还警告你可能会摔下来,简直是莫名其妙!印在儿童蝙蝠侠披风上的标识语竟然也告诫说,本玩具“无法让用户飞行”。
1. 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 panies lose when injured customers take them to court.
虽然警示语常常是合理而必要的,如对药物副
考研英语 1999 阅读及翻译 来自淘豆网www.taodocs.com转载请标明出处.