【写在前面】

暑假可以说是备考的黄金时间了，如何利用好这2个月的宝贵时间，全面提升各科实力，想必是诸多考研学子最想知道的事了吧。各种备考方法纷繁复杂，备考资料五花八门，如何不让这个暑假虚度呢，如何学才能更有效率呢。我想有一个方法是大家公认的，那就是做真题。数学，英语，专业课，真题都是最宝贵的资料。一天一篇真题记单词，在推出后受到了大家的认可，当然也有很多不足之处，在上学期出了20期后，暑期版隆重推出，希望能陪伴大家度过一个充实的暑假备战时期。

【真题原文】

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.

【单词讲解】

1 slip n. 1 滑倒, 事故2 片, 纸片 vi. 1 滑动, 滑倒, 失足2 减退
vt. 1 使滑动, 滑过, 摆脱2 闪开, 塞入
adj. 1 滑动的2 活络的, 有活结的

2 stoven. 炉

3 disastern. 灾难, 天灾, 灾祸

4 lawsuit n. 诉讼(尤指非刑事案件)

5 compensate v. 偿还, 补偿, 付报酬

6 liable adj. 有责任的, 有义务的, 易...的, 有...倾向的, 负有责任的,很有可能的 [固定搭配] be liable for 对...应负责任；be liable to (do sth.) 易于(得病等); 有(做某事的)习惯或倾向；有义务 (做某事)；be liable to (sth.) 应受(处罚等); 应服从(法令等)；易遭; 易犯(疾病)

7 anticipate vt. 1 预期, 期望2 过早使用, 先人一着, 占先 v. 预订, 预见;可以预料

8 federal adj. 联邦的, 联合的, 联邦制的, 同盟的 n. (南北战争时期)北部联邦同盟盟员

9 defendant n. 被告 adj. 辩护的, 为自己辩护的

10 paralyzevt. 使瘫痪, 使麻痹

11 helmet n. 头盔, 钢盔

12 jury n. [律] 陪审团, 评判委员会, 陪审员 adj. [海]临时应急的

13 recommendation n. 推荐, 介绍(信), 劝告, 建议

14 lengthyadj. (演说、文章等)冗长的, 过分的

15 triviality n. 琐事

16 draftn. 草稿, 草案, 草图 vt. 起草, 为...打样, 设计 v. 草拟

17 moderate adj. 中等的, 适度的, 适中的 v. 缓和 [固定搭配] exercise a moderating 18 influence on 对....起缓和作用

【参考译文】

外面的世界的很危险：迈出门去，你有可能被门口的垫子滑倒摔断腿；生个炉子，你有可能把房子烧毁。幸好，如果门垫和炉子忘了提醒你可能的危险，一切成功的诉讼就会赔偿人的损失。大约从20 世纪80 年代初开始，陪审员开始越来越多的裁定公司必须为其顾客的不幸负责。

公司感到了威胁，于是做出了反应，写出的警示标签越来越长，力图预测任何可能出现的事故。现在，梯子上的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，这简直是莫名其妙！儿童蝙蝠侠斗篷的标签上也竟然写着警告：本玩具“无法让使用者飞行”。

尽管警告通常是合理的也是必要的——比如说，警告某些药物会相互作用——而且联邦和地方法律也要求很多产品要有警告标签，但是一旦顾客受到损害，他们却无法保护生产者和商家免于责任，一旦被告上法庭，大约一半公司会输掉官司。

这种趋势现在正在转变。尽管由个人伤害引起的索赔一如既往，持续不断，但有些法庭已开始站到被告一方，特别是在处理那些即使有警示语也无法避免伤害的案件时。5 月份依利诺伊洲Schutt 运动器械公司经理Julie Nimmons 成功的打赢了一场官司。一位佩带他们生产的头盔的足球运动员在比赛中瘫痪了，Nimmons 说：“得知他瘫痪了我们很难过，但是头盔并不能防止这样的损伤。”陪审员同意了他的说法认为是比赛而不是头盔导致了这位运动员受伤。与此同时，美国法律协会，一个由一群举足轻重的法官、律师，学者组成的组织，发布了新的民事侵害法纲要，纲要指出：公司不必警示顾客那些显而易见的危险，或者给顾客列出一份长长的清单警示可能造成的危险。康奈尔大学法学院一位参与起草新纲要的教授说：“重要的信息会淹没在

【作业】

1.学习完单词后自己认真翻译原文，并将原文中红色字体部分句子的译文回帖，认真答题者奖励100HY

2.自己认真总结本篇文章的词组，长难句，可以整理在本子上（推荐），也可以跟帖总结，把每天的帖子当作你的笔记本

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