Law Commons^™

Adapting Private Law For Climate Change Adaptation, Jim Rossi, J. B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law Review

The private law of torts, property, and contracts will and should play an important role in resolving disputes regarding how private individuals and entities respond to and manage the harms of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation (known in climate change policy dialogue as “adaptation”). While adaptation is commonly presented as a problem needing legislative solutions, this Article presents a novel and overdue case for private law to take climate adaptation seriously.

To date, the role of private law is a significant blind spot in scholarly discussions of climate adaptation. Litigation invoking common-law doctrines in climate adaption disputes …

The New "Web-Stream" Of Commerce: Amazon And The Necessity Of Strict Products Liability For Online Marketplaces, Margaret E. Dillaway

Vanderbilt Law Review

Technology company Amazon has actively transformed into an e-commerce giant over the last two decades. Once a simple online bookstore, Amazon now boasts an ever-expanding identity as global cloud computing provider, major player in artificial intelligence, brick-and-mortar grocery store, and producer of original video content. At its roots, the company remains focused on e-commerce—its multibillion-dollar online marketplace hosts a massive digital space for commerce worldwide where customers can order “anything, with a capital A.”

Amazon derives many of its sales from third-party vendors who list products on the company’s website, Amazon.com. In this broadening chain of distribution for online retail, …

The Geologic Strata Of The Law School Curriculum, Robert W. Gordon

Vanderbilt Law Review

The modest aim of this piece is to supply some historical background to the other contributions to this Symposium. The modern American law school curriculum is the product of a few but critical choices of design, some of them over a century old. In this Article, I seek to (1) outline how the basic structure and content of the modern American law school curriculum came into being and what were the main competitors that curriculum displaced; (2) describe some of the ways in which the curriculum's basic structure and content have changed since its inception; and (3) point to some …

Human Rights Violations As Mass Torts: Compensation As A Proxy For Justice In The United States Civil Litigation System, Elizabeth J. Cabraser

Vanderbilt Law Review

On July 26, 2000, final approval was granted to a landmark $1.25 billion settlement of the claims of an international class of Holocaust victims against Swiss Banks that engaged in massive looting and misappropriation of assets entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of Jews and other groups imprisoned, murdered, and dislocated by the Nazi regime. The Swiss Banks complaints linked the actions of Swiss financial institutions to the Nazi regime and its program of genocide.

The Swiss Banks litigation was brought and settled under federal class action rules in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of …

Doing Good, Doing Well, Howard M. Erichson

Vanderbilt Law Review

On the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,' it is fitting that we should take account not only of what has become of school desegregation but also of the heroic public interest lawyer figure embodied by Thurgood Marshall. For his role as "the chief litigator for the civil rights movement," Marshall is widely regarded as a preeminent role model for public interest lawyers. Descriptions of Marshall's career as a public interest advocate emphasize not only his ability to "use the legal system as a tool for social change," but also his personal sacrifice as a lawyer who persevered …

The Muddled Duty To Disclose Under Rule 10b-5, Donald C. Langevoort, G. Mitu Gulati

Vanderbilt Law Review

Because the federal securities laws are, at heart, about disclosure, the question of whether and when there is a duty to disclose is often the central question in any given case. Certainly, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) has broad powers to compel disclosures by issuers and certain others and has crafted a mandatory disclosure regime that creates many explicit duties. For a variety of reasons, however, this explicit regime falls short of a comprehensive answer to the duty question. For some sixty years now, the hardest duty questions have been addressed under the rubric of fraud, mainly under Rule …

Cost-Benefit Analysis And The Negligence Standard, Stephen R. Perry

Vanderbilt Law Review

In his commentary on the proposed Restatement (Third) of Torts: General Principles (Discussion Draft) ("Discussion Draft"), Stephen Gilles does an excellent job of analyzing the role of cost- benefit analysis in the characterization of reasonable care in previous restatements, and also of tracing the relationship between that characterization and contemporaneous scholarly work. This is a necessary prelude to any attempt to reformulate the content of the negligence standard in a Restatement (Third), and I think that Gilles' work will prove to be exceptionally helpful in that regard. Given the limited space I have available for my own comments, however, I …

The Trouble With Negligence, Kenneth S. Abraham

Vanderbilt Law Review

The concept of negligence dominates tort law. Most tort cases are about negligence. Much tort law scholarship over the past several decades has been about the meaning of negligence. The new draft Restatement (Third) of Torts: General Principles ("Discussion Draft") devotes the vast majority of its first volume to negligence. And the idea of negligence as a liability standard is highly attractive to both the courts and commentators.

All the attention that negligence receives is not surprising, given the unattractiveness of the alternatives. Imposing liability only when the injurer intended harm seems unduly limited, in that it absolves injurers of …

Restatement (Third) Of Torts: General Principles And The Prescription Of Masculine Order, Anita Bernstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Until April 1999, when it published a draft called Restatement (Third) of Torts: General Principles ("General Principles"), the American Law Institute ("ALI") had never purported to declare the "general principles" of anything.' This lack of precedent meant a blank slate: Reporters can carry out a general-principles mandate in varying ways. One contributor to this Conference, David Owen, has spoken elsewhere of "paths taken and untaken in the Restatement (Third)" to describe choices about products liability rules. Professor Owen has perceived these divergences as wide and profound. In the General Principles, which strive to speak about all of Torts rather than …

The Restatement Of Torts And The Courts, Jack B. Weinstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Primarily through tort law the courts compensate those injured by others. Secondary aspects of our work such as deterrence or forcing tortfeasors to pay the full social costs of their activities are minor and collateral. For jurors focusing on compensation, tort law has only two operative elements: damage and cause. It is the law professor and the judge, through decisions on motions and instructions, who are the main Restatement consumers. Emphasizing mass torts, I will make three points relevant to those considering the health of tort law.

First: Tort law in its least inhibitory principle is useful be- cause of …

Introduction: The Third Restatement Of Torts: General Principles And The John W. Wade Conference, John C.P. Goldberg

Vanderbilt Law Review

The American Law Institute ("ALT") is in the midst of constructing the Restatement (Third) of Torts. Two parts of the project have already been completed and published as, respectively, the Restatement (Third): Products Liability and the Restatement (Third): Apportionment of Liability. The next component, a Restatement of the "General Principles" of tort, is underway. The goal for this facet of the overall project is to provide a coherent and usable account of fundamental tort concepts including intent, negligence, duty, actual and proximate cause, abnormally dangerous activity, and the like.

Reconceptualizing Strict Liability In Tort: An Overview, Martin A. Kotler

Vanderbilt Law Review

In a series of books and articles, Professor Marshall Shapo has developed the idea of American tort law as a "cultural mirror"--a legal system reflecting cultural norms that serves as the "intellectual and practical foundation for society's response to injuries." The "cultural mirror" metaphor captures both the notion that there is a substantive normative basis for tort law that exists within society and the procedural notion that tort law ensures that those underlying norms are reflected in the resolution of tort disputes.

Although I believe Professor Shapo's description to be fundamentally correct, it is also incomplete, and, as a result, …

Unpacking Limited Liability: Direct And Vicarious Liability Of Corporate Participants For Torts Of The Enterprise, Robert B. Thompson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The corporate form limits the liability of shareholders and other participants arising from the enterprise. This broad insulation shields corporate participants not only from vicarious liability for the acts of others, but even from liability for some of their own acts taken in the corporate name. The liability that is avoided does not disap- pear into a black hole; it falls onto another person. If the liability is shifted to a tort victim, the use of the corporate form seems particularly troublesome, permitting the enterprise to externalize part of the cost of doing business. This limitation seems inconsistent with the …

Environmental Torts, Troyen A. Brennan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Over the last two decades, a new class of torts has emerged that targets personal injuries caused by toxic substances in the environment. These hybrid environmental torts are quite distinct from the trespass-nuisance precedent that is part of traditional tort theory; nor are environmental torts simply a subset of the mass hazardous sub- stance litigation that has remade product liability law. Environmental torts are informed, in a way product law is not, by environmental regulation. These torts are unique because their deterrent signal is transmitted to producers of hazardous environmental pollutants by litigants who have suffered physical injury or disease. …

Damages For Emotional Distress In Fraud Litigation: Dignitary Torts In A Commercial Society, Andrew L. Merritt

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the most dynamic developments in modern tort law has been the increased focus on damages for emotional distress. During the past few decades courts have fashioned several new tort theories to allow recovery of emotional distress damages as independent causes of action. At the same time, lobbyists and legislators have attacked these damages for contributing to "runaway" jury verdicts. As a result of these attacks, a growing number of states are enacting statutes that limit recovery of emotional distress damages in traditional tort are as such as medical malpractice. Thus, damages for emotional distress are at a crossroads …

The $10.53 Billion Question--When Are The Parties Bound?: Pennzoil And The Use Of Agreements In Principle In Mergers And Acquisitions, Christopher M. Goffinet

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note addresses the problems created by Pennzoil and the use of agreements in principle in the area of mergers and acquisitions.

Part II discusses the relevant law on agreements in principle formed before entering into the formal contract contemplated by the parties.

Part III analyzes in depth the problems associated with agreements in principle in mergers and acquisitions.

Finally, Part IV suggests three possible solutions that, if adopted, could avoid the problems discussed in Part III.

Keepers Of The Flame: Prosser And Keeton On The Law Of Torts, Craig Joyce

Vanderbilt Law Review

Rarely in the history of American legal education has one author's name been so clearly identified with his subject as the name of William L. Prosser is with the law of torts. Even today, fourteen years after his death in 1972, "Prosser on Torts" remains in the minds of students, teachers, the bench, and the bar alike a single thought, its parts indistinguishable one from the other. Indeed, the passage of time has done nothing to diminish the influence of the man on the subject. His articles remain landmarks in the development both of the literature of torts and of …

Reconsidering Plaintiff's Fault In Product Liability Litigation: The Proposed Conscious Design Choice Exception, Vincent S. Walkowiak

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Uniform Comparative Fault Act, drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, was approved by the Commissioners in 1977. Dean John W. Wade was Chairman of the special committee that drafted the Act. The Act is a comparative-fault, rather than a comparative-negligence, act; it applies to all nonintentional torts, including products liability actions, whether they are based on negligence, breach of warranty,or strict tort liability. The Act seeks to address the problem of the relationship between the doctrines of comparative negligence and strict liability for products by permitting plaintiff's fault to effect a proportional reduction in …

Recent Cases, John P. Kelly, G. David Dodd

Vanderbilt Law Review

The principle that the government must not only refrain from providing special preference to a particular religion, but, that it also must stand apart from religion in general is abridged once the government seeks to provide sustenance to religious interests. Government neutrality is preserved, however, when the government merely provides fertile ground on which religious interests can thrive independently. Because state-imposed employment accommodation of religious precepts creates proselytizing opportunities" upon which religious interests flourish and because there is no overriding government interest in requiring such accommodation, Title VII's Randolph Amendment transgresses establishment clause prohibitions.

John P. Kelly

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The court …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Criminal Law-Confessions-- Government Can Satisfy Its Burden of Proving Waiver of Miranda Rights By Showing Warnings Given, Signed Waiver, and Proof of Defendant's Capacity to Understand the Warnings

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Criminal Procedure--Grand Jury-Attorney Work Product Consisting of Written Summaries and Personal Recollections of Interviews Is Privileged Against Disclosure at Federal Grand Jury Investigations

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Public Employees --Freedom of Association-Discharge of Non-policy-making Public Employees on Ground of Political Affiliation Infringes Employees' Freedom of Association

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Torts--Wrongful Death-Common--Law Cause of Action for Wrongful Death Exists Under Massachusetts Law

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Conflict of Laws--Torts--Lex Loci Delicti Is Proper Law When Parties Are Domiciled in Different Jurisdictions Unless Displacing That Law Advances Forum State's Substantive Law Purposes Without Impeding Interstate Relations or Predictability of Result

Plaintiff, an Ontario domiciliary, brought an action in New York for the wrongful death of her husband, also a domiciliary of Ontario,who was killed in a collision in that province' while a passenger in an automobile driven by defendant's intestate, a New York domiciliary. Defendant pleaded as an affirmative defense the Ontario guest statute, which restricts a guest's recovery to damages for injuries sustained only as a …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Constitutional Law--Due Process--Replevin Statutes Allowing Seizure of Property Without Notice and Opportunity for Hearing Violate Due Process Clause of Fourteenth Amendment

Constitutional Law--Right to Counsel--Absent Waiver,No Defendant May Be Imprisoned Unless Represented By Counsel At Trial

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure-Class Actions-Class Action Alleging Similar Injury by Separate Defendants Who Acted Similarly but Independently Allowed Under Rule 23(b)(3)

Securities Regulation--Securities Act of 1933-Access Of All Offerees To Additional Desired Information Required For Section 4(2) Private Offering Exemption

Torts-Joint Tort-feasors--Apportionment of Damages Among Negligent Joint Tort-feasors Based upon Relative Responsibility of Parties

Recent Development, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Comment will explore the origin, evolution, and refinement of the common-law classifications, with particular focus upon recent decisions abrogating these distinctions in favor of a broader standard of ordinary care under the circumstances.

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The problem of defining a landowner's' responsibility toward persons who come upon his premises has been the subject of longstanding controversy. While some commentators have argued that the limited responsibility placed by the common law on landowners does not comport with modern principles of negligence liability proponents of the common-law standards have urged that the common-law scheme of entrant classes--trespasser, licensee, invitee--provides a workable approach …

Mr. Wade And Wade Torts, James H. Wildman

Vanderbilt Law Review

We, his students, have never called him "Mr. Wade;" nor have we called him "Professor Wade." These words do not sound even faintly familiar. Yet Mr. Wade can rightfully claim major responsibility for the causal connection between Vanderbilt law student and Vanderbilt lawyer. Indeed, in this connection, the sine qua non rule applies to Mr. Wade. To the older of us, much of the detail of his visage and style have doubtless been lost--the jabbing hand, the lanky, angular figure, the Abe Lincoln face, the outstretched arms with fingers intertwined, the hands thrust deeply into pockets jingling change, and the …

Some Implications Of The Constitutional Privilege To Defame, Robert E. Keeton

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this issue of the Vanderbilt Law Review we honor an extraordinary scholar, teacher, and Dean. It is a happy circumstance that the editors have offered us this opportunity at a time when we can confidently predict that Dean Wade will continue to serve us with great distinction in years ahead. The present article concerns some pending problems in the law of defamation that have already attracted Dean Wade's active interest. This seems a particularly fitting subject for inclusion in a symposium celebrating not only his distinguished past service but also a commencement incident to his release from decanal responsibility.

Defective Products: Abnormal Use, Contributory Negligence, And Assumption Of Risk, Dix W. Noel

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article will attempt to analyze these three general kinds of conduct on the part of the plaintiff, giving attention to basic tort principles and to traditional distinctions. Special emphasis will be placed on the functions of court and jury in resolving questions posed by situations in which injury is caused both by a defective product and by the plaintiff's handling of that product. It will be shown that a court's choice of policy factors as a basis for strict liability may affect considerably its final decision.

The Legal Paraprofessional: An Introduction, Elliott E. Cheatham

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this country, persons who have not been admitted to the bar are widely used in law offices. In fact, A Lawyer's Handbook, edited by the American Bar Association's Committee on the Economics of Law Practice, devotes an entire chapter to the nonlawyer employee. Investigators and accountants are common and legal secretaries are universal. There are pressing questions on what more should be done to utilize laymen in making legal services available. This issue of the Vanderbilt Law Review considers the paraprofessional in law. The Symposium opens with an article by Mr. William P. Statsky. In his discussion, The Education …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust--Treble Damage Actions--Private Litigant Whose Injury Was Reasonably Foreseeable Has Standing To Sue

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Constitutional Law--Free Exercise of Religion--First Amendment Violated by Compulsory Education Statute that Prevents a Parent from Raising His Children According to His Religious Beliefs

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Constitutional Law--Immunity Statutes-Section 201 of Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Which Provides Only Use and Fruits Immunity, Violates Fifth Amendment

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Constitutional Law-Search and Seizure--AFDC Caseworker's Visit to Home of Nonconsenting Welfare Recipient Not Prohibited by Fourth Amendment

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Consumer Protection Law-Standing -United States Has Standing To Seek Injunction Against Practice of Obtaining Default Judgments Through False Affidavits Certifying Service …

Comments On Maki V. Frelk--Comparative V.Contributory Negligence: Should The Court Or Legislature Decide?, Fleming James Jr., Harry Kalven Jr., Robert E. Keeton, Robert A. Leflar, Wex S. Malone, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

Believing that the holdings and opinions in the case of Maki v. Frelkare significant legal developments, the Vanderbilt Law Review has solicited comments on these decisions, which it is now pleased to publish. These comments by six distinguished torts teachers and writers bear on the relative merits of comparative and contributory negligence, but more importantly, they discuss whether the judicial or legislative method is most appropriate for adoption of a rule of comparative negligence. It is hoped that these comments will be used as a sound basis for action, whether the problem arises before the courts or legislatures.

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Conflict of Laws--Significant Interest Doctrine Extended to Marital Property Litigation

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Constitutional Law-Search and Seizure--Fourth Amendment Restrictions Apply to Electronic Eavesdropping When Conversations Are Private--Physical Trespass Test Discarded

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Constitutional Law-Section 5(a) (1) (D) Prohibiting Members of Communist-Action Organizations from Employment in Defense Facilities Held Unconstitutional Infringement Upon Freedom of Association

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Criminal Law--Evidence-Unauthorized Juror View Violates Sixth Amendment Right to Confrontation

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Domestic Relations--Intentional False Representation of Pregnancy Grounds for Annulment

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Income Tax--Corporations--Attorneys' and Accountants' Fees Incurred in Sale of Assets Pursuant to a Section 337 Liquidation Are Not Deductible

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Interest--Usury--Charging Debtor with Statutory Maximum Loan Fees …