10 circumstances of their operations, and therefore should be on notice of human rights violations arising from those operations.12 In examining the Carbon Majors’ role in climate-related human rights violations in the Philippines, the Commission should consider fundamental principles of legal and moral responsibility, including respondents’ knowledge or notice of potential harms, the opportunity to avoid or reduce those harms, and the Carbon Majors’ conduct in light of the risk. Q16: Based on your knowledge and experience, how have courts determined foreseeable risks regarding a company’s products? A16: The question of foreseeability is central to the law of torts. As Meiring de Veillers observes, “[t]he degree to which a defendant could foresee the consequences of a wrongful act is a factor in assigning blameworthiness and moral responsibility for any harmful consequences.” 13 Accordingly, and with significant exceptions discussed more fully below, a defendant will generally be held liable under tort only when the harm the defendant caused was “foreseeable at the time of wrongdoing.”14 The law does not require, however, that the precise harm befalling a particular plaintiff have been foreseeable by the defendant; it is sufficient that the harm be similar to a foreseeable risk or category of risk. 15 Moreover, the degree and type of foreseeability analysis can vary widely in cases involving harmful products. Such harms can give rise to claims based on negligence, products liability, or both. Certain portions of the analysis, including the requirement to demonstrate that the company’s product actually caused or contributed to the harm suffered, are common to both types of claims. By contrast, the extent to which the hazard associated with a product must have been foreseen or foreseeable depends to a considerable extent on whether the claim is based on negligence or on strict liability, whether the jurisdiction follows the Second or Third Restatement of Torts, and how the standard has been incorporated into the law and interpreted by the domestic courts. In a negligence analysis, the default standard of care is the care that a “reasonable person” would exercise under the circumstances of the case, taking into account not only what that reasonable person knows but also what they should be expected to know. The standard of care, and particularly the presumption of knowledge, is higher in cases involving a company whose products are the cause of a harm. In determining what risks are foreseeable, 12 U.N. Special Rep. on Business & Human Rights, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/17/31 (Mar. 21, 2011) at 17, available athttps://businesshumanrights.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/ruggie/ruggie-guiding-principles-21-mar2011.pdf 13 Meiring de Villiers, Foreseeability Decoded, 16 Minn. J.L. Sci. & Tech. 343, 355 (2015). Available at hhtps://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mjlst/vol16/iss1/8. 14 Id. at 356. 15 Id. at 375.