LR Question 3 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Flynn: Allowing people to collect large damage awards…
QUESTION TYPE: Method of Reasoning
ARGUMENTS: Flynn argues that large lawsuit damage awards help consumers. The threat of damages makes corporations improve the safety of their products.
Garcia says that very large damages awards can bankrupt companies, costing jobs hurting the economy. This hurts consumers.
ANALYSIS: Flynn points out a benefit of large damages. Garcia doesn’t dispute Flynn’s point. Instead, they raise a new consideration: large damages have downsides too.
___________
- CORRECT. This is exactly what Garcia does. Undesirable consequences = corporations going out of business, jobs lost.
- This didn’t happen.
Example of answer: Garcia: Actually, when faced with large damages, corporations become irrational and start poisoning their products, out of spite. - This describes an analogy. Garcia didn’t make an analogy.
- This didn’t happen. And it’s hard to see how it could have. Flynn’s only policy is “large damages are good”. It’s hard to see how Flynn’s argument could directly support the idea that large damages are bad.
The only way to do that is to introduce other evidence, as Garcia actually did. - This didn’t happen. And it couldn’t happen, because there is no situation in Flynn’s argument. Flynn only said one thing: “Damages create an incentive to make safer products”.
You can’t explain that another way. It would be like trying to explain “Rain makes things wet” or “San Francisco is in California” another way. It’s a statement of fact.
More Resources for Method of Reasoning Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Method of Reasoning questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers method of reasoning questions.
Im confused though, I understand why A is right but I picked E and I took “the situation” in answer choice E to be ” allowing people to collect large damage awards.” Therefore, Garcia is responding by providing an alternative explanation to the “situation”, aka “allowing people to collect large damage awards” by saying it can actually be harmful and harm the consumers and economy by damage awards being so high that corporations cannot recover.
I wouldn’t necessarily say Flynn’s argument “describes a situation”. However, let’s say people’s ability to collect large damage awards is the situation in question.
Garcia isn’t providing an alternative EXPLANATION for it. This would mean that Garcia is offering a different reason for WHY people are able to receive large damage awards. But that’s not what he does. He’s arguing there’s other CONSEQUENCES that Flynn doesn’t mention, which is why answer A is correct.
So, providing alternative explanations for something means you provide a different cause or reason for why something happens. That’s not the same as arguing that there’s other consequences of that thing happening. Hope that helps!
what got me confused here was how answer choice A said “the policy SUPPORTED in Flynn’s argument…” it doesn’t say which side of the policy he supports
Flynn said that large damage awards benefit consumers and increase safety. It is reasonable in the context to assume that means Flynn supports the policy.
Suppose you don’t want to go to a restaurant. Would you say: It is tasty, it is wonderful, it is affordable, it is the best restaurant of all!
If you said those things, people would thing you wanted to go there. If in fact you wanted to go to a different restaurant then you should say different things.
The LSAT requires you to use basic common sense and normal interpretation when reading.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.