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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Re-Examination Of Sovereign Tort Immunity In Virginia, Edward W. Taylor
A Re-Examination Of Sovereign Tort Immunity In Virginia, Edward W. Taylor
University of Richmond Law Review
In a hair splitting decision on June 5, 1980, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in James v. Jane, that attending physicians at the University of Virginia Hospital are not immune from tort liability but affirmed that the state, interns and residents of state hospitals, and employees of the state still enjoy tort immunity. The court made a distinction between the sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia and its employees, and a governmental agency created by the Commonwealth and its employees. However, apparently not all state employees are immune; and not all employees of state agencies are subject to tort liability.
Tort Law-Interspousal Immunity-Action For Wrongful Death Against Surviving Spouse Held Maintainable When Such Act Terminates Marriage And Neither Child Nor Grandchild Survives Decedent
University of Richmond Law Review
The doctrine of interspousal immunity, established at early common law, considers husband and wife legally one. Under this view of unity, each spouse is precluded procedurally as well as substantively from suing the other in tort. To ameliorate the harshness of this view, the Married Women's Acts or Emancipation Acts were promulgated beginning in 1844. Although these statutes removed some of the disabilities of coverture from women in all of the fifty states, the majority of the statutes, including Virginia's, did not grant one spouse the right to sue the other for a personal tort. As early as 1888, the …
Interspousal Immunity-Automobile Negligence
Interspousal Immunity-Automobile Negligence
University of Richmond Law Review
At common law neither spouse could maintain an action against the other. With the passage of the Married Woman's Acts in the mid-nineteenth century it was agreed that a cause of action would then lie for property torts, but there was confusion as to whether the statutes gave a new cause of action for personal torts between the spouses. It therefore became a question of statutory interpretation, with the terminology of most of the statutes being consistent with either conclusion. The first courts to interpret the statutes held that no cause of action had been conferred and thereby laid the …