The American Museum of Tort Law is the first law museum in North America of any kind. It opened to the public on September 26, 2015. That morning I drove to the gravel driveway of Hastings Dorm and picked up three Harvard Law Students: Pete Davis, Mike Shammas and Jake Sussman. We were embarking on a law school field to check this museum out. Throughout the country there are 35,000 museums dedicated to a variety of subjects, such as sports, UFO’s and blueberries, but not one is dedicated to the subject of law. Given that America prides itself for being a country governed by the “rule of law”, it was about time a law museum made its way into the mix. Maybe it took till 2015 to have a law museum because exhibiting the law is not intuitive. Parchment behind Plexiglas will not draw many viewers. Even hardcore law students would prefer to read a case on their MacBooks. So how could this museum pull it off? The four of us pondered this question as we drove to Winsted Connecticut, the location of the tort museum.
What is a “tort” anyways? Although the subject brings dread to first year law students around the country, most people do not know what a tort is. At its core a tort is a wrongful injury that deserves a remedy. The stories behind these wrongful injuries can be fascinating and make for interesting facts in court opinions. It turns out the tort museum does a great job of depicting these stories.
The museum has a series of glossy panels, full of vivid color and comic-style illustrations, depicting the unfortunate events that led plaintiffs to file tort suits. Writing on the panels allows the viewer to grapple complex legal issues that arise from tort law, such as fault and causation. For instance, a panel on Brown v. Kendall depicts Mr. Kendall accidentally whacking Mr. Brown in the head with a massive stick. While Mr. Kendall could have been more careful using the stick to separate their two dogs from a fight, the Massachusetts court held that Mr. Brown had to prove Mr. Kendall acted carelessly or with the intent to do harm in order to be liable for the injury. In the same exhibit, there is a panel dedicated to Bryne v. Boodle, an influential tort case from England’s common law jurisprudence. The viewer’s eyes are drawn to a man sprawled out on a busy pedestrian street, his tongue sticking out with his top hat nearby. Beside him is a broken barrel that rolled out of the 2nd floor of Boadle’s flour shop. Here the court determined that the person in control of the barrel could be found negligent because this was the type of accident that would not have happened without some kind of carelessness.
As I read through these comic book depictions of tort law, I felt nostalgia for my 1L torts class. Jake, currently a 1L at HLS, pulled out his iPhone and took a few photos. “Posting them on Facebook?” I asked him. “Nah, these panels are great for my tort’s outline!” He was right, these panels do what museums do best; teach you something in an entertaining and interactive way.
The tort museum presents more than foundational tort cases. Fast-forward to 1994 and you have the infamous McDonald’s scalding coffee lawsuit, Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants. Liebeck is often cited by those opposed to tort law as an example of “lawsuit lottery” because the plaintiff—a 79-year-old woman—was awarded $2.86 million by a civil jury. This exhibit aims to differentiate fact from fiction. The plaintiff was ultimately awarded less than $500,000 after McDonalds rejected her initial request for $20,000 to cover medical expenses. Ms. Liebeck’s medical injuries were serious, third degree burns that put her in the hospital for eight days and caused permanent scarring. And Ms. Liebeck wasn’t the only one—between 1982 and 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald’s coffee (usually served at 180-degrees Fahrenheit). Appropriately, the exhibit displays a parody of the McDonald’s street sign with the motto “700 burned so far”.
In addition to visual art, the tort museum includes artifacts. An alcove display titled “Toys That Kill” includes action figures with lead paint and stuffed animals full of chocking hazards. Cigarette advertisements from the 1950’s through the 1980’s are displayed in the class action section. A 1950’s ad for Camel cigarettes stands out in my mind—“my doctor smokes Camels because they are good for his throat.” Yikes. It made me think of current product ads that will be thought of as ridiculous fifty years from now. Maybe Red Bull’s slogan “it gives you wings”.
The centerpiece of the museum is a well-polished 1963 Chevrolet Corvair; the car that Ralph Nader said had dangerous structural flaws in his 1965 book, “Unsafe at Any Speed.” The car was prone to lose control unexpectedly, which caused it to flip. With no seatbelts in cars at the time, the Chevy Corvair caused a series of deaths that led Ralph Nader to embark on his career as consumer activist. In addition to the Corvair, my classmates and I were expecting an exhibit of the Ford Pinto periodically igniting in flames. But we understood that such an exhibit might cause wrongful injury to museum visitors. A tort museum that caused torts was out of the question. 
This brings us to the purpose of the American Museum of Tort Law. Ralph Nader ‘58 is the main impetus behind the museum. As explained in a recent New York Times article, Mr. Nader hoped the museum would teach a new generation about the vital benefits of personal injury lawsuits and plaintiff lawyers. He wants to educate people about the hard-fought history of consumer protections that are now taken for granted — and that he says are under assault. “Tort law is being run into the ground, maligned, caricatured and slandered because it’s effective,” said Mr. Nader. He described the conservative agenda of tort reform—which seeks limits on lawsuits and financial awards—as the “cruelest movement I’ve ever encountered.” Mr. Nader also wants the exhibits to educate children so they can learn what it means to be a civic member of society. “Kids don’t know anything about jury service,’’ he said, “and yet, it’s the greatest institution in our system because ordinary people can judge General Motors and British Petroleum.”
At the dedication ceremony for the museum we listened to illustrious speakers such as Senator Richard Blumenthal, prizewinning historian Eric Foner of Columbia University and punk rock singer and author Patti Smith. One speaker was a well-known products liability lawyer from Georgia who secured multi-million dollar judgments against corporations. When Mr. Nader asked him how he won his cases, he answered that his secret to success consisted in three things: “preparation, preparation and preparation.” At the end of the ceremony Patti Smith sang an acoustic version of “People Have the Power.” The audience hesitantly sang along, but the Harvard Law delegation made sure to belt it out.
In conclusion, the American Museum of Tort Law impressed the four of us. It didn’t take itself too seriously, which made the viewer experience fun and informative. Even though I had taken torts, I learned quite a bit, so the non-lawyer could get a lot out of it. I agree with Mr. Nader and the speakers that the museum has the potential to become a national platform for discussing contemporary tort and consumer protection issues. Most importantly, it teaches the present day consumer how far we’ve come along thanks to tort law and the outspoken victims of wrongful injury.