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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Floodgates Of Strict Liability: Bursting Reservoirs And The Adoption Of Fletcher V. Rylands In The Guided Age, Jed Handelsman Shugerman Nov 2000

The Floodgates Of Strict Liability: Bursting Reservoirs And The Adoption Of Fletcher V. Rylands In The Guided Age, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

Part I presents an overview of Rylands v. Fletcher and then discusses the phases of the American response: the initial acceptance; the Northeastern rejections in the 1870s, which have been the basis for the erroneous scholarly conclusions; and the overlooked tide of acceptances across the country, beginning in the late 1880s and increasing in the 1890s. Part II places this wave of acceptance in its historical context of changing social forces, although these brief sketches are not the primary emphasis of this Note. First, during a period of rapid urbanization, a small number of courts sought to protect residential areas …


Liability Without Cause? Further Ruminations On Cause-In-Fact As Applied To Handgun Liability, Aaron Twerski, A. J. Sebok Jul 2000

Liability Without Cause? Further Ruminations On Cause-In-Fact As Applied To Handgun Liability, Aaron Twerski, A. J. Sebok

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Impact Of "Exceptional" Statutes On Civil Litigation In Minnesota, Michael K. Steenson Jan 2000

The Impact Of "Exceptional" Statutes On Civil Litigation In Minnesota, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the treatment of “exceptional” statutes--statutes intended to protect a specific class of persons against their own inability to protect themselves--by the Minnesota appellate courts. After an analysis of the origins of the negligence per se doctrine in Minnesota, the article briefly examines the relationship between negligence per se and common law negligence. Then, following a brief historical background discussion of earlier cases involving exceptional statutes, the article focuses on individual cases in which the exceptional statutes are implicated. The goal of the article is to determine whether the law the supreme court developed has been consistently adhered …


Defamation Per Se: Defamation By Mistake?, Michael K. Steenson Jan 2000

Defamation Per Se: Defamation By Mistake?, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

Defamation is a complicated tort, due in part to the differing rules that govern libel and slander, the two branches of the tort. The focus of this essay is on “defamation per se,” its origins in Minnesota, and the consequences of its misapplication. The essay opens with a short statement of standard defamation principles, followed by a short statement of the prevailing United States Supreme Court decisions, imposing First Amendment limitations on common law defamation claims, and the Minnesota cases that follow them. The next part analyzes a string of Minnesota cases that establish the foundation for Minnesota defamation law, …


Foreword: "Products Liability In The 21st Century Substantive U.S. And Foreign Product Liability Law", Michael K. Steenson Jan 2000

Foreword: "Products Liability In The 21st Century Substantive U.S. And Foreign Product Liability Law", Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

The idea for this William Mitchell Law Review Symposium on products liability law belongs to Ken Ross, who currently is Of Counsel to Bowman & Brooke. He specializes in products liability law and, as a preventive law specialist representing both domestic and foreign clients, he sees products liability law from a broad prospective that necessitates an understanding of products liability law from both a domestic and international perspective that takes into consideration legislative, regulatory, and common law shifts and trends in the law. This symposium is shaped around those broad interests.


Biotechnology And The Legal Constitution Of The Self: Managing Identity In Science, The Market, And Society, Jonathan Kahn Jan 2000

Biotechnology And The Legal Constitution Of The Self: Managing Identity In Science, The Market, And Society, Jonathan Kahn

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers how certain ideas underlying the tort of appropriation may enable use more effectively to deal with the problems presented by a case such Moore v. Regents of the University of California which dealt with property rights of Moore’s spleen cells. First, the author explores how the tort of appropriation of identity opens up new approaches to inform and perhaps supplement principles of property law as a guide to managing genetic information or other materials that seem intimately bound up with a particular human subject. Secondly, the author analyzes how the various opinions produced by the Supreme Court …


The Futures Problem, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. Jan 2000

The Futures Problem, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Tort Suits For Injuries Sustained During Illegal Abortions: The Effects Of Judicial Bias , Gail D. Hollister Jan 2000

Tort Suits For Injuries Sustained During Illegal Abortions: The Effects Of Judicial Bias , Gail D. Hollister

Faculty Scholarship

Most courts hold that, by agreeing to have an illegal abortion, a woman forfeits her right to recover for injuries tortuously inflicted during that abortion. Nevertheless, most courts do permit suits by those injured in the course of committing other crimes, and they usually do so without considering whether plaintiff's criminal conduct should prevent recovery. Part II of this Article explores and discredits the reasons offered for prohibiting recovery in abortion suits. 21 Part III analyzes, on a chronological basis, each state's decisions prohibiting such recovery. Part IV discusses possible explanations for the abortion decisions, noting that these women's claims …


Copyright And Parody: Touring The Certainties Of Property And Restitution, Wendy J. Gordon Jan 2000

Copyright And Parody: Touring The Certainties Of Property And Restitution, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

One of the supposed certainties of the common law is that persons need not pay for benefits they receive except when they have agreed in advance to make payment. The rule takes many forms. One of the most familiar is the doctrine that absent a contractual obligation, a person benefited by a volunteer ordinarily need not pay for what he has received. This rule supposedly both encourages economic efficiency and respects autonomy.


Class Action Accountability: Reconciling Exit, Voice, And Loyalty In Representative Litigation, John C. Coffee Jr. Jan 2000

Class Action Accountability: Reconciling Exit, Voice, And Loyalty In Representative Litigation, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In two recent and highly technical decisions – Amchem Products v. Windsor and Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp. – the Supreme Court has recognized that a serious potential for collusion exists in class actions and has outlined a concept of "class cohesion" as the rationale that legitimizes representative litigation. Although agreeing that a legitimacy principle is needed, Professor Coffee doubts that "class cohesion" can bear that weight, either as a normative theory of representation or as an economic solution for the agency cost and collective action problems that arise in representative litigation. He warns that an expansive interpretation of "class cohesion" …