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Full-Text Articles in Law
Anti-Patents, Roy Baharad, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ehud Gutte
Anti-Patents, Roy Baharad, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ehud Gutte
Faculty Scholarship
Conventional wisdom has long perceived the patent and tort systems as separate legal entities, each tasked with a starkly different mission. Patent law rewards novel ideas; tort law deters harmful conduct. Against this backdrop, this Essay uncovers the opposing effects of patent and tort law on innovation, introducing the "injurer-innovator problem." Patent law incentivizes injurers --often uniquely positioned to make technological breakthroughs--by allowing them to profit from licensing their inventions to competitors. Yet tort law, by imposing liability for failures to invest in care, forces injurers to incur the cost of implementing their own innovations. When the cost of self-implementation …
Guidelines And Best Practices For Large And Mass-Tort Mdls (Second Edition), Bolch Judicial Institute
Guidelines And Best Practices For Large And Mass-Tort Mdls (Second Edition), Bolch Judicial Institute
Bolch Judicial Institute Publications
Mass-tort MDLs dominate the federal civil docket, yet they present enormous challenges to transferee judges assigned to manage them. There is little official guidance and no rules specific to the management of mass-tort MDLs, often requiring the transferee judge to develop procedures out of whole cloth.
Beginning in 2013, the Bolch Judicial Institute (then the Center for Judicial Studies) sought to address this issue through a series of annual bench-bar conferences. From these conferences came the Guidelines and Best Practices for Large and Mass-Tort MDLs document — now in its Second Edition — which is designed to help judges and …
Culpable Participation In Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Culpable Participation In Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
This essay makes a case for the salience of tort law to fiduciary law, focusing on actors who culpably participate in a fiduciary's breach of duty, whether by inducing the breach or lending substantial assistance to it. Although the elements of this accessory tort are relatively settled in the United States, how the tort applies to particular categories of actors-most recently investment bankers who serve as M&A advisors-provokes controversy. The paper also explores the less developed terrain of primary actors who breach governance duties that are not fiduciary obligations because the entity's organizational documents eliminate fiduciary duties, as Delaware law …
Accessory Disloyalty: Comparative Perspectives On Substantial Assistance To Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Accessory Disloyalty: Comparative Perspectives On Substantial Assistance To Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
Culpable participation in a fiduciary's breach of duty is independently wrongful. Much about this contingent form of liability is open to dispute. In the United States, well-established general doctrine defines the elements requisite to establishing accessory liability, which is categorized as a tort and often referred to as "aiding-and abetting" liability. What's controversial is how the tort applies to particular categories of actors, most recently investment banks that advise boards of target companies in M&A transactions. In the United Kingdom, in contrast, accessory liability in connection with a breach of trust or fiduciary duty is controversial because the law is …
Fiduciary Breach, Once Removed, Deborah A. Demott
Fiduciary Breach, Once Removed, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Uneasy And Often Unhelpful Interaction Of Tort Law And Constitutional Law In First Amendment Litigation, George C. Christie
The Uneasy And Often Unhelpful Interaction Of Tort Law And Constitutional Law In First Amendment Litigation, George C. Christie
Faculty Scholarship
There are increasing tensions between the First Amendment and the common law torts of intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and privacy. This Article discusses the conflicting interactions among the three models that are competing for primacy as the tort law governing expressive activities evolves to accommodate the requirements of the First Amendment. At one extreme there is the model that expression containing information which has been lawfully obtained that contains neither intentional falsehoods nor incitements to immediate violence can only be sanctioned in narrowly defined exceptional circumstances, even if that expression involves matters that are universally regarded as being …
The Mdl Vortex Revisited, Thomas B. Metzloff
The Mdl Vortex Revisited, Thomas B. Metzloff
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Costs Of Changing Our Minds, Nita A. Farahany
The Costs Of Changing Our Minds, Nita A. Farahany
Faculty Scholarship
This isn’t quite a draft yet – it’s a concept paper. You’ll see after the first 10 pages a good bit of text in brackets, which are primarily notes for me, but it’ll give you a sense of the content of those sections. I’d like to talk through the concept – the “duty” to mitigate emotional distress damages and how courts have struggled with it, as a foray into a broader dichotomy that I see in a number of areas of law that suggest an implicit value in “cognitive liberty.” This is a smaller version of a broader book project …
A Comment On Restatement Third Of Torts’ Proposed Treatment Of The Liability Of Possessors Of Land, George C. Christie
A Comment On Restatement Third Of Torts’ Proposed Treatment Of The Liability Of Possessors Of Land, George C. Christie
Faculty Scholarship
In §§ 51 and 52 of the forthcoming second volume of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm, the reporters have sought to accommodate the trend to extend the liability of possessors of land to trespassers. The courts that have led the way in this legal transformation of the traditional common law have largely focused on the foreseeability of the trespasser and of the likelihood of injury from the disrepair of the premises. The Restatement (Third) takes a different approach by focusing on the flagrancy of the trespass, a concept with significant moral connotations. I argue …
The Unwarranted Conclusions Drawn From Vincent V. Lake Erie Transportation Co. Concerning The Defense Of Necessity, George C. Christie
The Unwarranted Conclusions Drawn From Vincent V. Lake Erie Transportation Co. Concerning The Defense Of Necessity, George C. Christie
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Civil Liability For Pure Economic Loss Under American Tort Law, Herbert Bernstein
Civil Liability For Pure Economic Loss Under American Tort Law, Herbert Bernstein
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Property And Tort In Nuclear Law Today, Kazimierz Grzybowski, William Dobishinski
Property And Tort In Nuclear Law Today, Kazimierz Grzybowski, William Dobishinski
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Nonphysical Torts And Workmen’S Compensation, Arthur Larson
Nonphysical Torts And Workmen’S Compensation, Arthur Larson
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.