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Articles 1 - 30 of 30
Full-Text Articles in Law
Replies To Commentators, John C.P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Replies To Commentators, John C.P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
With gratitude for our commentators’ thoughtful and generous engagement with Recognizing Wrongs, we offer in this reply a thumbnail summary of their comments and responses to some of their most important questions and criticisms. In the spirit of friendly amendment, Tom Dougherty and Johann Frick suggest that a more satisfactory version of our theory would cast tort actions as a means of enforcing wrongdoers’ moral duties of repair. We provide both legal and moral reasons for declining their invitation. Rebecca Stone draws a particular link between civil recourse in private law theory and the right of self-defense as recognized in …
Deadly Dust: Occupational Health And Safety As A Driving Force In Workers’ Compensation Law And The Development Of Tort Doctrine And Practice, George Conk
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Three Lives Of The Alien Tort Statute: The Evolving Role Of The Judiciary In U.S. Foreign Relations, Thomas H. Lee
The Three Lives Of The Alien Tort Statute: The Evolving Role Of The Judiciary In U.S. Foreign Relations, Thomas H. Lee
Faculty Scholarship
This Article explains how the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) began in the late eighteenth century as a national security statute that the First Congress and early federal district judges saw as a way to afford damages remedies to British merchants, creditors, and other subjects whose persons or property were injured under circumstances in which treaties or the law of nations assigned responsibility to the United States. Torts committed within the United States by private American citizens were the most likely such circumstances. The ultimate aims of the statute were to avoid renewed war with Great Britain and the other European …
The Inner Morality Of Private Law, Benjamin C. Zipursky
The Inner Morality Of Private Law, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
Lon Fuller's classic The Morality of Law is an exploration of the basic principles of a legal system: the law should be publicly promulgated, prospective, clear, and general. So deep are these principles, he argued, that too great a deviation from them would not simply create a bad legal system and bad law, but would render the products of such a system undeserving of the name "law" at all. In this essay, I argue that Fuller's basic principles are not in fact desiderata for all of law, observing that much of private law plainly flouts them; it is unwritten, retroactive, …
The Role Of The Judge In Non-Class Settlement, Howard M. Erichson
The Role Of The Judge In Non-Class Settlement, Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
This commentary argues that judges lack the authority, as a general matter, to approve or reject non-class settlements. While judges overseeing mass litigation can set the stage for settlement by instituting phased discovery, scheduling bellwether trials, and other methods, they should respect the line between facilitation of settlement and control over settlement terms. The paper was presented in response to Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s and his special masters' account of their handling of the September 11 clean-up litigation.
Civil Recourse Defended: A Reply To Posner, Calabresi, Rustad, Chamallas, And Robinette, Benjamin C. Zipursky, John C.P. Goldberg
Civil Recourse Defended: A Reply To Posner, Calabresi, Rustad, Chamallas, And Robinette, Benjamin C. Zipursky, John C.P. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
As part of a symposium issue of the Indiana Law Journal devoted to our Civil Recourse Theory of Tort Law, we respond to criticisms by Judge Calabresi, Judge Posner, and Professors Chamallas, Robinette, and Rustad. Calabresi and Posner criticize Civil Recourse Theory as a bit of glib moralism that fails to generate useful answers to the difficult questions that courts face when applying Tort Law. We show with several examples, both old and new, that the glibness is all on their side. From duty to causation to punitive damages, from products liability to fraud to privacy, our scholarship has had …
The Fraud-On-The-Market Tort, John C.P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky
The Fraud-On-The-Market Tort, John C.P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
Fraud on the market is at the core of contemporary securities law, permitting 10b-5 class actions to proceed without direct proof of investor reliance on a misrepresentation. Yet the ambiguities of this idea have fractured the Supreme Court from its initial recognition of the doctrine in Basic v. Levinson to its recent decision in Amgen, Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds. Amidst divergent views of the coherence and advisability of liability for fraud on the market a fundamental question lurks: is a suit for damages that invokes the fraud-on-the-market theory a claim for common law deceit, such that …
Palsgraf, Punitive Damages, And Preemption, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Palsgraf, Punitive Damages, And Preemption, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
This Article utilizes civil recourse theory along with a pragmatic conceptualist methodology to solve three problems in tort law: one on Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., one on punitive damages (as seen in the Supreme Court’s struggles with Philip Morris v. Williams), and one on federal preemption (as seen in the Supreme Court’s 4-4 deadlock in Warner-Lambert Company v. Kent). Confusion has been generated by a failure to recognize that -- despite the many aspects of tort law that render it importantly public -- there is something distinctively private about the common law of torts. When one firmly rejects …
Consent V. Closure, Howard M. Erichson, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Consent V. Closure, Howard M. Erichson, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
Claimants, defendants, courts, and counsel are understandably frustrated by the difficulty of resolving mass tort cases. Defendants demand closure, but class certification has proved elusive and non-class settlements require individual consent. Lawyers and scholars have been drawn to strategies that solve the problem by empowering plaintiffs’ counsel to negotiate package deals that effectively sidestep individual consent. In the massive Vioxx settlement, the parties achieved closure by including terms that made it unrealistic for any claimant to decline. The American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation offers another path to closure: it proposes to permit clients to consent …
Integrity And The Incongruities Of Justice: A Review Of Daniel Markovits, A Modern Legal Ethics, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Integrity And The Incongruities Of Justice: A Review Of Daniel Markovits, A Modern Legal Ethics, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
Daniel Markovits’ recent book, A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age, begins by articulating an ethical quandary common to litigators: how can I advocate zealously for a client whose story might not be true and whose causes might not be just? In Markovits’ hands, the dilemmas of the adversary advocate are transformed into a philosophical puzzle about the nature of integrity and the very idea of fidelity to a client. Lawyers face a far more onerous ethical burden than is sometimes recognized, Markovits argues, for the adversary advocate in our legal system is professionally obligated to lie …
Torts As Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Torts As Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
Torts scholars hold different views on why tort law shifts costs from plaintiffs to defendants. Some invoke notions of justice, some efficiency, and some compensation. Nearly all seem to agree, however, that tort law is about the allocation of losses. This Article challenges the widespread embrace of loss-based accounts as fundamentally misguided. It is wrongs not losses that lie at the foundation of tort law. Tort suits are about affording plaintiffs an avenue of civil recourse against those who have wronged them. Although torts were once routinely understood as wrongs, since Holmes’s time, tort scholars have tended to suppose that …
Uncertainty And The Advantage Of Collective Settlement Symposium: The Limits Of Predictability And The Value Of Uncertainty: Sixteenth Annual Clifford Symposium On Tort Law And Social Policy, Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
Judgments are printed in black and white; reality comes in shades of gray. The settlement palette available to negotiating parties, unlike the adjudication palette available to judges and juries, offers a range of grays to suit the realities of uncertain liability, uncertain causation, and uncertain damages. Settlement thus offers certain advantages over adjudication. I am not referring to process advantages, such as speed, economy, privacy, and relationship preservation. Rather, I am referring to the idea that settlements may offer outcomes that more accurately comport with justice under the relevant facts and law. There is, of course, a long-running debate over …
The Easy Case For Products Liability: A Response To Polinsky & Shavell, Benjamin C. Zipursky, John C.P. Goldberg
The Easy Case For Products Liability: A Response To Polinsky & Shavell, Benjamin C. Zipursky, John C.P. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
In their article “The Uneasy Case for Product Liability,” Professors Polinsky and Shavell assert the extraordinary claim that there should be no tort liability - none at all - for injuries caused by widely-sold products. In particular, they claim to have found convincing evidence that the threat of tort liability creates no additional incentives to safety beyond those already provided by regulatory agencies and market forces, and that tort compensation adds little or no benefit to injury victims beyond the compensation already provided by various forms of insurance. In this response, we explain that, even on its own narrow terms, …
Sleight Of Hand, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Sleight Of Hand, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
Thanks to Richard Posner's classic 1972 article, A Theory of Negligence Law, the Hand formula of United States. v. Carroll Towing Co. is perhaps the most central idea of many first-year torts classes today. Students learn that the meaning of negligence should be understood in terms of Judge Learned Hand's formula comparing the costs of taking precautions with the product of the likelihood of injury without those precautions and the magnitude of such injury. There is more than a little irony, however, in the superstar status of the Hand formula in negligence law. Carroll Towing is not a negligence case …
Theory Of Punitive Damages, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Theory Of Punitive Damages, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
A contemporary theory of punitive damages must answer two questions: (1) what place, if any, do punitive damages have in the civil law of tort, given that they appear to involve an idea of criminal punishment? (2) why are punitive damages subject to special constitutional scrutiny, as in the Supreme Court's decision in BMW v. Gore, if they really are part of the civil law of tort? The article offers a theory that can answer both of these questions. Punitive damages have a double aspect, corresponding to two senses of "punitive." Insofar as they pertain to the state's goal of …
Doing Good, Doing Well Symposium, Howard M. Erichson
Doing Good, Doing Well Symposium, Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
Rather than focusing on the differences between tort lawyers and activists as they ally with each other, this Article focuses on the motivations and explanations of the tort lawyers themselves. Positioned at the intersection of big-money practice and social change litigation, mass torts provide a useful study in multiple motivations. While financial incentives for plaintiffs' lawyers explain much of what happens in mass torts, policy objectives come into play as well, at least in the lawyers' rhetoric. Despite the obvious difficulty distinguishing reasons from rhetoric and rationalization, it is worth exploring the significance of mixed motives for lawyers who are …
Civil Recourse, Not Corrective Justice, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Civil Recourse, Not Corrective Justice, Benjamin C. Zipursky
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Tort Suits For Injuries Sustained During Illegal Abortions: The Effects Of Judicial Bias , Gail D. Hollister
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 …
When Is Property Intellectual: The Leveraging Problem Essays, Mark R. Patterson
When Is Property Intellectual: The Leveraging Problem Essays, Mark R. Patterson
Faculty Scholarship
Patents and copyrights protect inventions and expression; they do not protect products. This distinction, I argue in this essay, is a key to the antitrust problem of the "leveraging" of intellectual property. In a typical leveraging case, the manufacturer of a durable good, like a copier or computer, refuses to sell replacement parts for its equipment unless the purchaser also hires the manufacturer to service the equipment. Such a practice can be illegal under antitrust law, but when the leveraging products-in this example, replacement parts-are protected by patent or copyright, the manufacturer will often claim that the leveraging is a …
Mass Tort Litigation And Inquisitorial Justice, Howard M. Erichson
Mass Tort Litigation And Inquisitorial Justice, Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
In the past decade, settlement class actions have become increasingly popular in mass tort litigation, having been used successfully in cases such as the Dalkon Shield litigation, the Bjork-Shiley heart valve litigation, and the orthopedic bone screw litigation. Although the Supreme Court's opinion in Amchem has engendered some confusion over the continued viability of mass tort settlement class actions, it appears that such settlements remain a dominant approach to resolving mass tort lawsuits. With increasing frequency, plaintiffs and defendants come to court holding hands, and courts must launch their own vigorous inquiries into the merits of the parties' proffered settlement. …
Food For The Lions: Excessive Damages For Newsgathering Torts And The Limitations Of Current First Amendment Doctrines , Andrew B. Sims
Food For The Lions: Excessive Damages For Newsgathering Torts And The Limitations Of Current First Amendment Doctrines , Andrew B. Sims
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Purposeful Approach To Products Liability Warnings And Non-English-Speaking Consumers Notes, Thomas H. Lee
Purposeful Approach To Products Liability Warnings And Non-English-Speaking Consumers Notes, Thomas H. Lee
Faculty Scholarship
This Note examines the problems associated with the duty-towarn doctrine and the non-English-speaking consumer or product user. Part II explains the current duty-to-warn doctrine, emphasizing when a warning is required, to whom the warning must be directed, and how the warning must be given. Next, Part III examines state and federal language-specific statutes, constitutional provisions, and case holdings, emphasizing the most recent cases addressing product warning requirements for non-English-speaking plaintiffs. Part IV then outlines the risks to both product sellers and consumers of continuing the current haphazard approach and suggests a statutory solution to the doctrinal confusion, drawing from the …
Using Comparative Fault To Replace The All-Or-Nothing Lottery Imposed In Intentional Torts Suits In Which Both Plaintiff And Defendant Are At Fault , Gail D. Hollister
Using Comparative Fault To Replace The All-Or-Nothing Lottery Imposed In Intentional Torts Suits In Which Both Plaintiff And Defendant Are At Fault , Gail D. Hollister
Faculty Scholarship
All or nothing. For years this idea of absolutes has been a hallmark of tort law despite the inequities it has caused. Plaintiffs must either win a total victory or suffer total defeat. In recent years courts and legislatures have begun to recognize the injustice of the all-or-nothing approach and to replace it with rules that permit partial recoveries that are more equitably tailored to the particular facts of each case. The most dramatic example of this more equitable approach is the nearly universal rejection of contributory negligence in favor of comparative fault in negligence cases. Almost all jurisdictions, however, …
The Promissory Basis Of Past Consideration, Steve Thel, Edward Yorio
The Promissory Basis Of Past Consideration, Steve Thel, Edward Yorio
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Tort Liability For Physical Injuries Allegedly Resulting From Media Speech: A Comprehensive First Amendment Approach , Andrew B. Sims
Tort Liability For Physical Injuries Allegedly Resulting From Media Speech: A Comprehensive First Amendment Approach , Andrew B. Sims
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Promissory Basis Of Section 90, Edward Yorio, Steve Thel
The Promissory Basis Of Section 90, Edward Yorio, Steve Thel
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Common-Law Background Of Nineteenth-Century Tort Law, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Common-Law Background Of Nineteenth-Century Tort Law, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
A century ago Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., examined the history of negligence in search of a general theory of tort. He concluded that from the earliest times in England, the basis of tort liability was fault, or the failure to exercise due care. Liability for an injury to another arose whenever the defendant failed "to use such care as a prudent man would use under the circumstances.” A decade ago Morton J. Horwitz reexamined the history of negligence for the same purpose and concluded that negligence was not originally understood as carelessness or fault. Rather, negligence meant "neglect or failure …
Competitive Process And Gray Market Goods, The , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley
Competitive Process And Gray Market Goods, The , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley
Faculty Scholarship
Although it has the appearance of benefiting the consumer, the phenomenon of gray market goods is, for the most part, a species of unfair competition. Where an exclusive distribution contract between foreign and domestic entities enhances interbrand competition and satisfies a rule of reason analysis, it should be considered a protectable property interest. There is little justification for permitting gray market imports to interfere with that interest by taking advantage of the good will associated with the distribution, marketing, warranties and servicing provided by the United States distributor. The antitrust goal of promoting long-run consumer interests is not advanced by …
Torts 1978 Survey Of New York Law: Part Five: Miscellaneous, Michael M. Martin
Torts 1978 Survey Of New York Law: Part Five: Miscellaneous, Michael M. Martin
Faculty Scholarship
The principal torts decisions this Survey year, especially in the products liability area, seemed to leave as many questions unanswered as they resolved. The Court of Appeals held that a noncontracting user's claim for injuries from a defective product sounded in tort for limitations purposes, but the Court did not decide what limitation period would be applicable if a statutory breach of warranty claim were also asserted. The contributory negligence defense to a strict products liability claim was upheld by a reference to the appellate division's opinion in a second-collision case. The analytically suspect "sales"-"service" distinction was reaffirmed in an …
Measuring Damages In Survival Actions For Tortious Death , Michael M. Martin
Measuring Damages In Survival Actions For Tortious Death , Michael M. Martin
Faculty Scholarship
Survival statutes have been adopted to avoid the effect of common law rules preventing claims for the tortious death of a human being. These statutes give the personal representative such causes of action on behalf of the decedent's estate as the decedent would have had were he still alive. The question the statutes do not answer, however, is the effect of the death of a party on the measure of damages. The Washington Supreme Court's decision in Warner v. McCaughan illustrates the problem. Warner arose out of the death of a twenty-one year old college student. Alleging that the death …