[长难句突破]

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.

主体句式：The American Law Institute issued new guidelines...

结构分析：本句的主语有一个较长的修饰结构，即两个破折号之间的内容，说明了这个Institude的组成。主句中包含了一个that引导的定语从句，句子最后还有一个with引导的壮语，起到补充说明的作用。

[全文译文]

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.

外面是一个危险的世界。如果你走出去，可能会滑倒在门垫上，摔伤一条腿。如果你点燃炉灶，可能会把整幢房子烧掉。但是假如门垫或炉灶上没有警示语告诉你可能发生的危害，你或许可以就自己所受的伤害通过法律诉讼，成功地获得赔偿。大约自80年代初以来这种想法开始日渐流行，因为从那时起陪审团开始认为更多的公司应对其顾客所遭受的不幸负责。

公司因此感到了威胁，便做出了反应，写出越来越长的警示标识语，力图预先标明种种可能发生的事故。其结果就是，现在的梯子上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--这简直就是莫名其妙！印在儿童蝙蝠侠披风上的标识语竟然还警告说，本玩具"无法让用户飞行"。

虽然警示语常常是合理且必要的，如对药物的相互作用而产生危险的警示语，并且很多警示语是州或联邦法律所规定的，但是如果消费者受伤，这些警示语能否真正使制造商和销售商免于责任，这还很难说。当受伤的消费者把公司告上法庭后，大约一半的结果是公司败诉。

现在看来这种趋势正在转变。尽管个人伤害的指控一如既往还在继续，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。五月份，伊利诺斯州的Shutt体育公司总裁朱利·尼蒙斯就成功地打赢了这样一场官司。一名橄榄球队员戴着该公司的头盔在一场比赛中受伤瘫痪，遂将该公司告上法庭。公司总裁朱利·尼蒙斯争辩说："他的瘫痪使我们非常难过，但头盔子在设计时并不是为了预防这类伤害的。"陪审团也认为造成该运动员受伤的不是头盔，而是这项运动本身的危险性。同时，美国法学会--该学会由一群举足轻重的法官、律师、学者所组成--签署的新民事侵权法纲要中宣布，公司没有必要警示消费者那些显而易见的危险，即公司无需为消费者列出一份冗长的可能危险的清单。康奈尔大学法学院一位参与起草新纲要的法学教授说，"重要的信息可能会淹没在细枝末节的汪洋之中"。如果该法律团体的这一适当目的能够实现，产品上提供的警示信息就可以用来真正保护消费者利益，而不是为了避免让公司承担法律责任。