abstract. This chapter evaluates the risks of open-ended judicial review of complex tort issues, and specifically design issues. Not confined to products liability design defect matters, this chapter examines other areas, including medical malpractice, governmental, and environmental designs that have been the subject of challenge by injured plaintiffs. It explores such themes as institutional competency, as well as the bona fides of traditional tort contemplations of enterprise liability, the prima facie case, and evidentiary requisites. The chapter concludes that courts have avoided open-ended design review in each of the major contexts in which the pressures to engage in such review are the greatest. In product design litigation, the primary means of controlling the negligence concept is the requirement, where adopted, that plaintiff prove both the technological feasibility of a safer alternative design and but-for causation. In medical malpractice litigation, where the safer-alternative-design approach is not available, courts rely on professional custom to supply specific standards that render negligence claims adjudicable. As for negligence claims against the government, where neither safer-alternative-design nor reliance-on-custom solutions are available, courts and legislatures have built on the traditional principle of sovereign immunity to allow courts to impose tort liability on governmental actors while avoiding open-ended review of complex institutional designs. In each context, courts have adopted an approach unavailable in the others by which to contain the negligence concept and keep it with its proper bounds.