.  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 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 "does not enable user 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. "We're really sorry he has become paralyzed, but helmets aren't designed to prevent those kinds of injuries," says Nimmons. The jury agreed that the 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. "Important information can get buried in a sea of trivialities," says a law 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.1.  What were things like in 1980s when accidents happened? ______
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】 本题可参照文章的第1段。从中可知，出门时，你可能会因为门前的擦鞋垫滑倒而摔断腿；点炉子时，你可能会因此烧毁整幢房屋。幸运的是，如果垫子或炉子没有提醒你即将发生的危险，一场成功的民事诉讼或许就可以补偿你所受的伤害。大约从20世纪80年代初开始，这种观念就一直这么延续着——当时，陪审团开始认为，更多的公司应该对其客户遭受的不幸负责。据此可知，20世纪80年代，如果消费者因商品而受伤，法律会保护他们，法庭会裁定公司应该对消费者遭受的不幸负责。B项与文中的意思相符，因此B项为正确答案。
[参考译文] 外面的世界很危险。出门时，你也许会因门前的擦鞋垫滑倒而摔断一条腿。在点燃炉灶时，你也许会因此烧毁整幢房子。幸运的是，假如垫子或炉灶上没有警示字样来提醒你可能发生的危险的话，一场成功的诉讼或许就可以补偿你所受的伤害。大概自20世纪80年代初以来这种观念就一直这么延续着，陪审团成员开始认为，更多的公司应该对它们的消费者遭受的不幸负责。
   由于感到(赔偿的)威胁，公司做出对策，写出的警告标签愈来愈冗长，以期预见任何可能出现的意外。这导致现在的梯子上的警示标签有几英寸长，除了警告你可能发生的其他意外外，还警告你可能摔下来——这真是不可理喻的警告。孩子们的蝙蝠侠玩具斗篷上也标有警告词：本玩具“不能用来飞行”。
   虽然警示语经常是合理的和必要的，例如有关药物相互作用可能产生的危害的警示语，而且很多警示标签是州或联邦法律规定必须有的，但是，如果消费者受伤，这些警示标签能否保护产销商免于赔偿还不得而知。当受伤的消费者把公司告到法庭时，大约50%的公司会输掉官司。
   今天看来这种趋势正在转变。虽然个人伤害索赔案件如以往一样仍在不断发生，但有些法院已开始站在被告一边，尤其是处理那些即使有警示语也无济于事的案例时。在5月份(美国)伊利诺伊州的Schutt体育用品公司被告上法庭，一位橄榄球队员戴了Schutt体育用品公司生产的头盔比赛时受伤并瘫痪。该公司总裁Julie Nimmons辩解说：“他瘫痪了，我们真的很难过，但是这种头盔设计时不是用来预防这种伤害的。”陪审团也赞同造成球员受伤的不是头盔，而是橄榄球运动本身(的危险性)。公司因此胜诉。与此同时，美国法学会——该组织由一群举足轻重的法官、律师和学者组成——宣布的新民事侵权行为法纲要指出：公司没有必要警告消费者明显的危险，或者就也许产生的危险向他们提供一个长长的单子。康奈尔大学法学院的一位参与新纲要起草的法学教授说，“关键信息可能被埋没在浩如烟海的小细节里。”如果该法律组织的这一不太过分的要求能够实施，产品上提供的信息实际上可能是用来保护消费者利益的，而不是为了规避法律责任的。