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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Law
Insufficient Causes, David A. Fischer
Insufficient Causes, David A. Fischer
Faculty Publications
This article analyzes a difficult causation question. If a force is not independently sufficient to bring about an injury, under what circumstances should a court find the force to be a cause of the injury? The question has practical importance. It frequently arises in litigation involving toxic torts and products liability failure to warn. The article includes a critique of the NESS test of causation as it pertains to this issue. This article explores this weakness of the NESS test in the context of insufficient causes, and offers important new insights with respect to the limitations of the NESS test. …
Kiss And Tell: Making The Case For The Torious Transmission Of Herpes And Human Papillomavirus, Michele L. Mekel
Kiss And Tell: Making The Case For The Torious Transmission Of Herpes And Human Papillomavirus, Michele L. Mekel
Missouri Law Review
Recognizing theories of recovery for a tort committed an estimated six million times per year in the United States alone at an annual cost in excess of $4 billion is logical—if not imperative. Not all jurisdictions, however, recognize theories of recovery when the tort in question is the wrongful transmission of herpes and human papillomavirus (“HPV”), two of the most common, incurable sexually transmitted diseases (“STDs”) in America. Nevertheless, in Deuschle v. Jobe, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District of Missouri took a significant step by acknowledging an unmarried sexual partner’s right to bring negligence and intentional …
Tort Recovery For Loss Of A Chance, David A. Fischer
Tort Recovery For Loss Of A Chance, David A. Fischer
Faculty Publications
Tort lawyers in the United States often think of “loss of a chance” as a theory of “probabilistic causation” that only applies to medical malpractice misdiagnosis cases. The theory is that if a physician negligently fails to diagnose a curable disease, and the patient is harmed by the disease, the physician should be liable for causing the “loss of a chance” of a cure. We shall see that if the chance of a cure is less than 50 percent, the plaintiff cannot prove by a preponderance of evidence that the negligence caused the harm, and would recover no damages under …
Negligent Retention And Arbitration: The Effect Of A Developing Tort On Traditional Labor Law, Terry A. Bethel
Negligent Retention And Arbitration: The Effect Of A Developing Tort On Traditional Labor Law, Terry A. Bethel
Journal of Dispute Resolution
As negligent retention theories continue to grow, courts will inevitably address these questions. This article will offer a brief introduction to the tort of negligent retention and related doctrines and will discuss how courts will accommodate them within traditional labor law principles. Despite my impulsive reaction that negligent retention poses a threat to arbitration, I conclude that, for the most part, negligent retention and labor arbitration can coexist peacefully.
Hindsight Bias And Tort Liability: Avoiding Premature Conclusions, Philip G. Peters Jr.
Hindsight Bias And Tort Liability: Avoiding Premature Conclusions, Philip G. Peters Jr.
Faculty Publications
Cognitive psychologists know that judgments made in hindsight are distorted by two cognitive heuristics-hindsight bias and outcome bias. Hindsight bias makes bad outcomes seem more predictable in hindsight than they were ex ante. Outcome bias induces us to assume that people who cause accidents have been careless. Because of these biases, individuals who know that a bad outcome has occurred tend to evaluate prior conduct more harshly than they would if they were unaware of the actual outcome. In negligence actions, defendants are supposed to be judged by the reasonableness of their conduct, not by its outcome. Jurors are asked …
Wrongful Life, Wrongful Birth, Wrongful Death, And The Right To Refuse Treatment: Can Reasonable Jurisdictions Recognize All But One, Mark Strasser
Wrongful Life, Wrongful Birth, Wrongful Death, And The Right To Refuse Treatment: Can Reasonable Jurisdictions Recognize All But One, Mark Strasser
Missouri Law Review
One of the most controversial birth-related torts is the wrongful life action in which a plaintiff sues for damages, claiming that he would have been better off never having lived at all and, but for defendant's negligence, would not in fact have lived. Most jurisdictions refuse to recognize this cause of action. However, the justifications for those refusals are often unpersuasive, since the acceptance of those rationales would imply that other existing practices must be changed. For example, although wrongful life and wrongful birth are different actions involving different duties and harms, many of the rationales for and against recognizing …
Prying, Spying And Lying: Intrusive Newsgather And What The Law Should Do About Them, Lyrissa Lidsky
Prying, Spying And Lying: Intrusive Newsgather And What The Law Should Do About Them, Lyrissa Lidsky
Faculty Publications
The media's use of intrusive newsgathering techniques poses an increasing threat to individual privacy. Courts currently resolve the overwhelming majority of conflicts in favor of the media. This is not because the First Amendment bars the imposition of tort liability on the media for its newsgathering practices. It does not. Rather, tort law has failed to seize the opportunity to create meaninful privacy protection. After surveying the economic, philosophical, and practical obstacles to reform, this Article proposes to rejuvenate the tort of intrusion to tip the balance between privacy and the press back in privacy's direction. Working within the framework …
The Restatement's Rejection Of The Misappropriation Tort, Gary Myers
The Restatement's Rejection Of The Misappropriation Tort, Gary Myers
Faculty Publications
Some legal theories, like the proverbial vampire, refuse to die. The common law tort of misappropriation is one such legal theory, and the recent Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition (Restatement) may finally lead to the demise of this outdated cause of action. Misappropriation began advisedly enough as a means of protecting certain intellectual property rights from unjust usurpation, often by direct competitors employing improper means. Arising before comprehensive copyright, patent, and trademark laws were fully developed, the tort may have played an important role in protecting intangible proprietary interests.The tort's high water mark was the 1918 Supreme Court decision in …
Products Liability-Proximate Cause, Intervening Cause, And Duty, David A. Fischer
Products Liability-Proximate Cause, Intervening Cause, And Duty, David A. Fischer
Faculty Publications
The primary emphasis of this article will be on the application of proximate cause in strict liability cases involving physical harm to person or property. This includes breach of implied warranty cases causing physical harm as well as strict tort liability cases. For purposes of the matters discussed in this article, the two theories are essentially the same. The major difference between the theories is that warranty law may recognize some contract defenses that do not apply in strict tort cases. The article will also discuss negligence cases for purposes of comparison and contrast with the strict liability cases. This …
Tort Law: Expanding The Scope Of Recovery Without Loss Of Jury Control, David A. Fischer
Tort Law: Expanding The Scope Of Recovery Without Loss Of Jury Control, David A. Fischer
Faculty Publications
This article will analyze the types of changes that are taking place by examining three expanding areas of tort law: liability for negligently inflicted mental distress, negligently inflicted pure pecuniary loss, and harm caused by defective products. This examination will demonstrate that the scope of liability can be increased in at least two ways. One is by formally expanding the scope of existing causes of action, e.g., relaxing arbitrary barriers to liability or expanding the type of damages which may be recovered. A second method is by relaxing judicial control over the jury. This relaxation of control can take place …
Products Liability--The Meaning Of Defect, David A. Fischer
Products Liability--The Meaning Of Defect, David A. Fischer
Faculty Publications
In the products liability area the pendulum has now swung back to the imposition of strict liability. This transition, beginning with the elimination of the privity requirement in negligence actions, continuing with the imposition of strict liability under a warranty theory, and culminating in the development of a tort theory of recovery in strict liability, has been well-documented.