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Full-Text Articles in Torts

Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel Dec 2015

Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …


Neither Savior Nor Bogeyman: What Waits Behind The Door Of Third-Party Litigation Financing?, Jeremy Kidd Aug 2015

Neither Savior Nor Bogeyman: What Waits Behind The Door Of Third-Party Litigation Financing?, Jeremy Kidd

Jeremy Kidd

The arguments for and against third-party litigation financing are based on incorrect assumptions regarding the impacts on total litigation. A formal model incorporating the choices of plaintiff, lawyer, and financier shows only minimal impact on total litigation, largely positive. However, after addressing the potential for long-term, strategic behavior by financiers, it is obvious that some dangers remain. Divorced from the dramatic claims of proponents and opponents, litigation financing is merely a tool that can be used for good or bad, and differentiating by types of claims and the incentives of the parties allows that tool to be appropriately used.


Closing The Door To Lost Earnings Under The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act Of 1986, Aaron M. Levin Jun 2015

Closing The Door To Lost Earnings Under The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act Of 1986, Aaron M. Levin

Aaron M Levin

After a wave of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers hindered the profitability and production of life-saving vaccines, Congress enacted The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The Act offers an incentive for individuals to get vaccinated in order to mitigate the population’s exposure to disease, while encouraging the continued production of these serums by pharmaceutical companies. Although imperfect, the Vaccine Act fosters promise in filtering out frivolous claims and provides a central route for due process to the individuals who suffer from a vaccine-related injury. By removing a potential state tort issue to the Federal Circuit, Congress created a reasonably …


An Approach To The Regulation Of Spanish Banking Foundations, Miguel Martínez Jun 2015

An Approach To The Regulation Of Spanish Banking Foundations, Miguel Martínez

Miguel Martínez

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the legal framework governing banking foundations as they have been regulated by Spanish Act 26/2013, of December 27th, on savings banks and banking foundations. Title 2 of this regulation addresses a construct that is groundbreaking for the Spanish legal system, still of paramount importance for the entire financial system insofar as these foundations become the leading players behind certain banking institutions given the high interest that foundations hold in the share capital of such institutions.


Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton Jun 2015

Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton

Timothy D. Lytton

This essay critically evaluates Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s proposal to allow patients to prospectively waive their rights to bring a malpractice claim, presented in their recent, much acclaimed book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. We show that the behavioral insights that undergird Nudge do not support the waiver proposal. In addition, we demonstrate that Thaler and Sunstein have not provided a persuasive cost-benefit justification for the proposal. Finally, we argue that their liberty-based defense of waivers rests on misleading analogies and polemical rhetoric that ignore the liberty and other interests served by patients’ tort law rights. …


Economics-Based Environmentalism In The Fourth Generation Of Environmental Law, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2014

Economics-Based Environmentalism In The Fourth Generation Of Environmental Law, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Environmental protection and economic concerns are not mutually exclusive. This article explores some of the issues of economic analysis that might arise as we approach the fourth generation of environmental law. It explains ways that economic analysis can be employed to generate the best environmental rules, including measures under what this article terms as "economics-based environmentalism." Economics-based environmentalism contends that the advantages of using economic principles within a “polycentric toolbox” of environmental law come from the benefits available in private ordering, markets, property rights, liability regimes and incentives structures that will better protect the environment than alternatives like state-based interventionist, …


Revisiting Curd V. Mosaic Fertilizer, Llc. A Perversion Of Private Standing Under Section 376.313 Of Florida’S Pollution Discharge Prevention And Recovery Act, Levi L. Wilkes May 2014

Revisiting Curd V. Mosaic Fertilizer, Llc. A Perversion Of Private Standing Under Section 376.313 Of Florida’S Pollution Discharge Prevention And Recovery Act, Levi L. Wilkes

Levi L Wilkes

No abstract provided.


Corporate Social Responsibility In A Remedy-Seeking Society: A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2013

Corporate Social Responsibility In A Remedy-Seeking Society: A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Written for the Chapman Law Review Symposium on “What Can Law & Economics Teach Us About the Corporate Social Responsibility Debate?,” this Article applies the lessons of public choice theory to examine corporate social responsibility. The Article adopts a broad definition of corporate social responsibility activism to include both (1) those efforts that seek to convince corporations to voluntarily take into account corporate social responsibility in their own decision-making, and (2) the efforts to alter the legal landscape and expand legal obligations of corporations beyond traditional notions of harm and duty so as to force corporations to invest in interests …


Valuing Mom & Dad: Calculating Loss Of Parental Nurture In A Wrongful Death Action, Andrew J. Laurila May 2013

Valuing Mom & Dad: Calculating Loss Of Parental Nurture In A Wrongful Death Action, Andrew J. Laurila

Andrew J. Laurila

No abstract provided.


Rescuing Access To Patented Essential Medicines: Pharmaceutical Companies As Tortfeasors Under The Prevented Rescue Tort Theory, Richard Cameron Gower Apr 2013

Rescuing Access To Patented Essential Medicines: Pharmaceutical Companies As Tortfeasors Under The Prevented Rescue Tort Theory, Richard Cameron Gower

Richard Cameron Gower

Despite some difficulties, state tort law can be argued to create a unique exception to patent law. Specifically, the prevented rescue doctrine suggests that charities and others can circumvent patents on certain critical medications when such actions are necessary to save individuals from death or serious harm. Although this Article finds that the prevented rescue tort doctrines is preempted by federal patent law, all hope is not lost. A federal substantive due process claim may be brought that uses the common law to demonstrate a fundamental right that has long been protected by our Nation’s legal traditions. Moreover, this Article …


Debating Law's Irrelevance: Legal Scholarship And The Coase Theorem In The 1960s, Steven G. Medema Feb 2013

Debating Law's Irrelevance: Legal Scholarship And The Coase Theorem In The 1960s, Steven G. Medema

Steven G Medema

The paper examines the treatment of the Coase theorem by legal scholars during the 1960s. The analysis demonstrates that it was legal scholars, rather than economists, who took the lead in applying Coase's negotiation result in the legal realm and that the early diffusion of Coase's result in the legal literature is anything but a "Chicago" story. We also observe that legal scholars were interesting in examining the applicability of Coase's result across a wide range of legal issues and, in contrast to economists, who were preoccupied with the efficiency predication of Coase's result, tended to focus on Coase's invariance …


Tort Law And Probabilistic Litigation: How To Apply Multipliers To Address The Problem Of Negative Value Suits, Ben Depoorter Dec 2009

Tort Law And Probabilistic Litigation: How To Apply Multipliers To Address The Problem Of Negative Value Suits, Ben Depoorter

Ben Depoorter

This Article advances a proposal that brings to life valuable lawsuits that litigation costs currently discourage. Our proposal converts claims with negative expected values into positive expected value claims by implementing a novel system involving flexible conditional multipliers. Our proposal has two components. First, under the proposed system a plaintiff is allowed to select a damage multiplier that determines the amount of damages the plaintiff will receive if the litigation is successful. Second, courts select cases for litigation randomly with a probability inverse to the multiplier the plaintiff selected.


Law In The Shadow Of Bargaining: The Feedback Effect Of Civil Settlements, Ben Depoorter Dec 2009

Law In The Shadow Of Bargaining: The Feedback Effect Of Civil Settlements, Ben Depoorter

Ben Depoorter

Lawmakers, courts, and legal scholars often express concern that settlement agreements withhold important information from the public. This Essay identifies, to the contrary, problematic issues involving the availability of information on non-representative settlements. The theoretical and empirical evidence presented in this Essay demonstrates that, despite the widespread use of nondisclosure agreements, information on settlements is distributed both inside and outside legal communities, reaching actors through various channels including the oral culture in legal communities, specialized reporters, professional interest organizations, and media coverage. Moreover, information on private settlement agreements circulates more widely if the agreed compensation in a given settlement exceeds …


Limiting Limited Liability, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci Jan 2006

Limiting Limited Liability, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

Limited liability may result in inefficient accident prevention, because a relevant portion of the expected harm is externalized on victims. This paper shows that under some restrictive conditions further limiting liability by means of a liability cap can improve caretaking.


From Libertarianism To Egalitarianism, Justin Schwartz Jan 1992

From Libertarianism To Egalitarianism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard natural rights argument for libertarianism is based on the labor theory of property: the idea that I own my self and my labor, and so if I "mix" my own labor with something previously unowned or to which I have a have a right, I come to own the thing with which I have mixed by labor. This initially intuitively attractive idea is at the basis of the theories of property and the role of government of John Locke and Robert Nozick. Locke saw and Nozick agreed that fairness to others requires a proviso: that I leave "enough …