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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
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 …
Prudence, Benevolence, And Negligence: Virtue Ethics And Tort Law, Heidi Li Feldman
Prudence, Benevolence, And Negligence: Virtue Ethics And Tort Law, Heidi Li Feldman
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Tort law assesses negligence according to the conduct of a reasonable person of ordinary prudence who acts with due care for the safety of others. This standard assigns three traits to the person whose conduct sets the bar for measuring negligence: reasonableness, ordinary prudence, and due care for the safety of others. Yet contemporary tort scholars have almost exclusively examined only one of these attributes, reasonableness, and have wholly neglected to carefully examine the other elements key to the negligence standard: prudence and due care for the safety of others. It is mistaken to reduce negligence to reasonableness or to …