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Full-Text Articles in Law

Anti-Patents, Roy Baharad, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ehud Gutte Jan 2024

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 …


Accessory Disloyalty: Comparative Perspectives On Substantial Assistance To Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott Jan 2016

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 …


Culpable Participation In Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott Jan 2016

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 …


Fiduciary Breach, Once Removed, Deborah A. Demott Jan 2016

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 Jan 2015

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 Jan 2015

The Mdl Vortex Revisited, Thomas B. Metzloff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Costs Of Changing Our Minds, Nita A. Farahany Jan 2014

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 Jan 2011

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 …


“An Ingenious Man Enabled By Contract”: Entrepreneurship And The Rise Of Contract, Catherine Fisk Jan 2007

“An Ingenious Man Enabled By Contract”: Entrepreneurship And The Rise Of Contract, Catherine Fisk

Faculty Scholarship

A legal ideology emerged in the 1870s that celebrated contract as the body of law with the particular purpose of facilitating the formation of productive exchanges that would enrich the parties to the contract and, therefore, society as a whole. Across the spectrum of intellectual property, courts used the legal fiction of implied contract, and a version of it particularly emphasizing liberty of contract, to shift control of workplace knowledge from skilled employees to firms while suggesting that the emergence of hierarchical control and loss of entrepreneurial opportunity for creative workers was consistent with the free labor ideology that dominated …


The Unwarranted Conclusions Drawn From Vincent V. Lake Erie Transportation Co. Concerning The Defense Of Necessity, George C. Christie Jan 2006

The Unwarranted Conclusions Drawn From Vincent V. Lake Erie Transportation Co. Concerning The Defense Of Necessity, George C. Christie

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Medical Malpractice And The Tort System In Illinois (Report To The Illinois State Bar Association, May 2005), Neil Vidmar Jan 2005

Medical Malpractice And The Tort System In Illinois (Report To The Illinois State Bar Association, May 2005), Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

A report to the Illinois State Bar Association of a study examining the incidence, frequency, size of verdicts and other aspects of the medical malpractice system in Illinois. The study looked at statewide data where available, concentrating on Cook and DuPage counties, and Madison and St. Clair counties. The study concludes that the Illinois tort system does not appear to be the cause of the undisputed fact that doctors' liability insurance premiums showed dramatic rises.


Punitive Damages By Juries In Florida: In Terrorem And In Reality, Neil Vidmar, Mary R. Rose Jan 2001

Punitive Damages By Juries In Florida: In Terrorem And In Reality, Neil Vidmar, Mary R. Rose

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years there have been numerous proposals for punitive damage reform. Proponents of such reform have often asserted that punitive damages are both common and exorbitant. In this Article, Professor Vidmar and Dr. Rose examine the validity of these and other empirical claims about punitive damages. They do so by studying punitive damage awards reported in the Florida Jury Verdict Reporter. Ultimately, they conclude that there is no empirical support for the claims made by proponents of tort refrom in Florida.


Civil Liability For Pure Economic Loss Under American Tort Law, Herbert Bernstein Jan 1998

Civil Liability For Pure Economic Loss Under American Tort Law, Herbert Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Constitutional Limits Of Judicial Rulemaking: The Illegitimacy Of Mass-Tort Settlements Negotiated Under Federal Rule 23, Paul D. Carrington, Derek P. Apanovitch Jan 1997

The Constitutional Limits Of Judicial Rulemaking: The Illegitimacy Of Mass-Tort Settlements Negotiated Under Federal Rule 23, Paul D. Carrington, Derek P. Apanovitch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


On The Idea Of Private Law, Martin Stone Jul 1996

On The Idea Of Private Law, Martin Stone

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Are Juries Competent To Decide Liability In Tort Cases Involving Scientific/Medical Issues? Some Data From Medical Malpractice, Neil Vidmar Jan 1994

Are Juries Competent To Decide Liability In Tort Cases Involving Scientific/Medical Issues? Some Data From Medical Malpractice, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Note, Frye V. Frye: Maryland Sacrifices The Child For The Sake Of The Family, Kathryn Webb Bradley Jan 1986

Note, Frye V. Frye: Maryland Sacrifices The Child For The Sake Of The Family, Kathryn Webb Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Anatomy Of A Torts Class, James Boyle Jan 1985

The Anatomy Of A Torts Class, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Property And Tort In Nuclear Law Today, Kazimierz Grzybowski, William Dobishinski Jan 1977

Property And Tort In Nuclear Law Today, Kazimierz Grzybowski, William Dobishinski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Nonphysical Torts And Workmen’S Compensation, Arthur Larson Jan 1975

Nonphysical Torts And Workmen’S Compensation, Arthur Larson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.