Law Commons^™

Ruffled Feathers At Hubbard Poultry Company, Tammy W. Cowart, Barbara Ross Wooldridge

Accounting, Finance & Business Law Faculty Publications and Presentations

This case has a labor law and product liability focus and is suited for a human resource, employment or business law class at the undergraduate level. This case is based on an actual incident; the names of the workers and company have been changed.

Scuba Diving Buddies: Rights, Obligations, And Liabilities, Phyllis G. Coleman

Faculty Scholarship

A common misconception is that scuba diving is dangerous; the reality is that divers are more likely to be hurt in their cars driving to the dive site than in an underwater accident. Arguably one reason the sport is so safe is the widespread, and often mandatory, use of the buddy system.

A buddy expects his partner to perform a variety of tasks, which include assisting during an emergency. However, a glaring omission in the legal literature is the important issue of what happens when a diver's failure to act results in his buddy's death or serious injuries. This article …

Texas Annual Survey: Securities Regulation, George Lee Flint Jr

Faculty Articles

Many courts rendered opinions during the Survey period affecting the reach of the Texas Securities Act (“TSA”). The Texas Supreme Court acknowledged the TSA’s reach over dealers selling from Texas to non-residents of the state, as well as over registration of securities sold. In contrast, the Fifth Circuit continued Congress’s campaign to limit regulation of interest rate swaps to federal regulatory bodies by defining “security” in the TSA to exclude interest rate swaps. In Kastner v. Jenkens & Gilchrist, P.C., a Texas appellate court determined that lawyers are not subject to liability for aiding and abetting when they merely prepare …

Study On Safety And Liability Issues Relating To Package Travel, Frank Alleweldt, Klaus Tonner, Marc Mcdonald

Articles

This study on safety and liability issues relating to package travel, package holidays and package tours highlights some of the gaps in the EU package travel law by answering a number of specific questions related to statistical evidence, Community legislation, and US legislation. It also suggests possible solutions to fill these gaps. The study was prepared by Civic Consulting and is based on a legal analysis, a literature review, an evaluation of statistical data, and on interviews with European and national travel and tour operator associations, individual tour operators, European and national associations of insurers, individual insurance companies, and European …

Limiting Federal Agency Preemption: Recommendations For A New Federalism Executive Order, William Funk, Thomas Mcgarity, Nina A. Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matthew Shudtz, James Goodwin

Other Publications

The structure of the U.S. Constitution reflects a profound respect for the principles of federalism and state sovereignty. These principles require the federal government to recognize and encourage opportunities for state and local governments to exercise their authority, especially in areas of traditional state concern such as the protection of the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens. However, over the last six years there has been a coordinated Executive Branch effortto use the regulatory process to shield certain product manufacturers from state tort liability. The Food and Drug Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Consumer Product Safety Commission, …

Data Security And Tort Liability, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Established tort principles carefully applied to the contemporary problems of cybersecurity and identity theft can perform a key role in protecting the economic foundations of modern life. Tort law offers an appropriate legal regime for allocating the risks and spreading the costs of database intrusion-related losses. It can also create incentives, on the part of both database possessors and data subjects, to minimize the harm associated with breaches of database security.

In considering this field of tort law, it is useful to differentiate three questions. The first issue is whether database possessors have a legal duty to safeguard data subjects’ …

Operationalizing Deterrence Claims Management (In Hopsitals, A Large Retailer, And Jails And Prisons), Margo Schlanger

Articles

The theory that the prospect of liability for damages deters risky behavior has been developed in countless articles and books. The literature is far sparser, however, on how deterrence is operationalized. And prior work slights an equally important effect of damage actions, to incentivize claims management in addition to harm-reduction responses that are cost- rather than liabilityminimizing. This article works in the intersection of these two understudied areas, focusing on claims management steps taken by frequently sued organizations, and opening a window into the black box of deterrence to see how those steps may end up serving harm-reduction purposes as …

Making Nuisance Ecological, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Common law nuisance doctrine has the reputation of having provided much of the strength and content of environmental law prior to the rise of federal statutory regimes in the 1970s, but since then has taken a back seat to regulatory law with respect to the environment. In particular, whereas nuisance doctrine has been criticized - many say too harshly - as being inadequate for dealing with the demands of modern pollution control, it has never been considered as having much at all to do with management of ecological concerns. Yet nuisance law evolves with changed circumstances and new knowledge. This …