Torts Commons^™

News Media’S Impact On Perceptions Of The Civil Justice System, Hugh M. Robert

ExpressO

With cases in the news like the McDonalds case, it has left the public with a very distorted view of the civil justice system. Information about the civil litigation system is critical because citizens report that the news media is their primary source of information about the court system, an even more important source than contact with the courts themselves. With the general public relying primarily on the news media as their source of information, it is necessary to examine what is being reported and the frequency of covering both sides to the story, the true story.

The Price-Anderson Public Liability Action And Strict Liability, Donald E. Jose, Michael A. Garza

ExpressO

Nuclear Power and nuclear weapons plants seem to be an ultrahazardous activity for which strict liability should apply. However, unusual provisions of the Price-Anderson Act serve to shield nuclear power and nuclear weapons plants and associated activities from strict liability unless the federaq agency regulating the activity determins that a special from of strict liability can be applied.

Cold Comfort Pharmacy: Pharmacist Tort Liability For Conscientious Refusals To Dispense Emergency Contraception, Kristen Marttila Gast

ExpressO

The past several years have seen an increasing number of pharmacists refuse to dispense emergency contraception, an effective, post-coital form of contraception, on the grounds that the drug violates their personal beliefs. This Article addresses the impact of those pharmacist refusals under existing principles of tort law. The Article draws on existing pharmacy case law, state-specific refusal clauses, and ethics statements promulgated by professional pharmacy associations to investigate whether pharmacists have a legal duty to dispense emergency contraception, notwithstanding religious or ethical objections. Concluding that in most states, such a legal duty does exist, the Article develops a “wrongful conception” …

Are All ‘Legal Dollars’ Created Equal?, Doron Teichman, Yuval Feldman

ExpressO

For several decades law and economic scholars have employed the tools of price theory in order to evaluate an array of legal questions ranging from criminal sanctions to contract remedies. This vast body of literature implicitly assumed that all payments made through the legal system are fungible. In other words, just as a dollar paid for a tomato is identical to a dollar paid for a cucumber, so are a dollar paid as a pollution tax to the government and a dollar paid as compensation to the party injured by the pollution. In this study we challenge this assumption, and …

Cyber-Extortion: Duties And Liabilities Related To The Elephant In The Server Room, Adam J. Sulkowski

ExpressO

This is a comprehensive analysis of the legal frameworks related to cyber-extortion – the practice of demanding money in exchange for not carrying out threats to commit harm that would involve a victim's information systems. The author hopes it will catalyze an urgently needed discussion of relevant public policy concerns.

Cyber-extortion has, by all accounts, become a common, professionalized and profit-driven criminal pursuit targeting businesses. 17% of businesses in a recent survey indicated having received a cyber-extortion demand. An additional 13% of respondents were not sure if their business had received such a demand.

Awareness of the risks of cybercrime …

Of Fine Lines, Blunt Instruments And Half-Truths: Business Acquisition Agreements And The Right To Lie, Jeffrey M. Lipshaw

ExpressO

In this article, I expand upon a happy coincidence (for scholars) in reconciling the overlap between contract and fraud. Both the recent book by Ian Ayres and Gregory Klass and the Delaware Court of Chancery in Abry Partners Acquisition V, L.P. v. F& W Acquisition, LLC addressed the issue of promissory fraud – the making of a contract as to which the promisor had no intention of performing. Each treatment, however, in focusing on fraudulent affirmative representations, falls short of (a) recognizing the fundamental aspect of deceptive promising in a complex deal, namely the half-truth, (b) articulating an appropriate doctrinal …

New Differences Between Negligence And Strict Liability And Their Implications On Medical Malpractice Reform, Noam Sher

ExpressO

The present article seeks to explore previously undiscussed differences between the negligence and strict liability rules and thereby examine the required medical liability reform, if such reform is indeed required. Our main thesis is that negligence as a basis for liability entails a unique mechanism, which is essentially different than the strict liability mechanism, and is more efficient for several reasons, related to the legal function of resolving partial information problems which cause partial failure in the healthcare market. Among other things, the negligence mechanism (1) motivates the parties to a potential damages claim to invest in information gathering; (2) …

Taxing Emotional Injury Recoveries: A Critical Analysis Of Murphy V. Internal Revenue Service, Gregory L. Germain

ExpressO

Does Congress have the power under the United States Constitution to tax compensatory personal injury awards? Several months ago, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said "no" in Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service. The court theorized that Ms. Murphy’s compensatory damages award did not constitute “income,” as understood by the enactors of the 16th Amendment, because the award merely made Ms. Murphy whole rather than increasing her wealth.

This paper disputes virtually every aspect of the Murphy decision. The court made errors from the beginning in analyzing the statutory issues. While the court ultimately reached the correct preliminary conclusion – …

Daubert And The Disappearing Jury Trial, Allan Kanner

ExpressO

Since being decided by the Supreme Court in 1993, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals has earned its place as one of the most misinterpreted and misapplied decisions in modern history. Meant to liberalize the standards for admissions of proof, the decision has had the opposite effect. The gatekeeper powers given to judges via Daubert, coupled with the internal and external incentives to prevent jury trials, has placed our entire civil justice system at risk.

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Airline Liability For Loss, Damage Or Delay Of Passenger Baggage, M. R. Franks

ExpressO

The article discusses remedies and methods of enforcing airline liability for loss, damage or delay of passenger baggage. The article includes a discussion of the law as it relates both to domestic flights and to international flights where passenger luggage is lost, damaged or delayed. The article includes a discussion of the Warsaw Convention as it relates to international flights and of the Federal Aviation Regulations applicable in the case of domestic flights.

The Conditional Effects Of Ideology And Institutional Structure On Judicial Voting In State Supreme Courts, Jeff L. Yates, Paul Brace, Brent Boyea

ExpressO

Two enormously influential perspectives on courts offer fundamentally different predictions about court outcomes and the effects of judge ideology on those outcomes. Well-known to political scientists studying courts, the ideological voting (IV) literature argues that judge ideology is a strong predictor of court outcomes and that those outcomes should be proximate to the policy preferences of courts. Less known to political scientists but highly influential, the law and economics perspective (LE) focuses on settlement behavior of litigants who try to minimize costs and thus estimate likely outcomes in court, and settle simpler cases pre-trial. In this case selection process litigants …

Perceptions Of Morality And The Appeal Of Tort Reform, Martin A. Kotler

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Standardized Tests, Erroneous Scores, And Tort Liability, Vincent R. Johnson

ExpressO

Recently, there has been a vast expansion of standardized testing and of related scoring errors. For example, in October 2005, the College Board mis-scored 5,000 SAT exams. Most scores were too low by 50 to 100 points, but in some cases the deficiency was over 400 points. This is the first law review article to examine the issue of whether mis-scoring of standardized tests is actionable until traditional tort theories. The article assesses the viability of claims for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, defamation, false-light invasion of privacy, tortious interference, and injurious falsehood.

Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, And Disability, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Margo Schlanger

ExpressO

This article contributes to the broad debate over “adaptive preferences” in law, economics, and political philosophy by addressing an important ongoing controversy in tort law. Hedonic damages compensate for the lost enjoyment of life that results from a tortious injury. Lawyers seeking hedonic damages in personal injury cases emphasize their clients’ new status as compromised and damaged persons, and courts frequently uphold jury verdicts awarding hedonic damages to individuals who experienced disabling injuries based on a view that disability necessarily limits one’s enjoyment of life. This view is consonant with a general societal understanding of disability as a tragedy and …

The Impact Of Tort Reform On Medical Malpractice Payments, Ronen Avraham

ExpressO

This study evaluates the impact of six different types of tort reforms on the frequency, size and number of total annual settlements in medical malpractice cases between 1991 and 1998. Previous studies have failed to correctly identify the effective dates of reforms, to account for the retroactive applicability of striking down reforms, or used highly selected samples of jury verdicts or litigated cases. I employ a new legal data set of tort reforms, which carefully evaluates effective dates as well as when certain laws were overturned. Medical malpractice data comes from the National Practitioner Data Bank, which contains more than …

Successor Liability For Defective Products: A Redesign Ongoing, Richard L. Cupp

ExpressO

Successor products liability – cases where an injured plaintiff sues a successor business for a defective product sold by a predecessor business -- is a doctrine still under development in the courts, and the doctrine’s unsettled nature seems destined to continue over the next several years. Jurisdictions may be roughly divided into three categories. Several take a restrictive approach toward liability in such cases (sometimes called the “traditional approach”), allowing it only when relatively rare exceptions to a general no-liability rule apply. Several other jurisdictions are less restrictive with successor products liability, allowing recovery under the “product line” or “continuity …

Authorship, Audiences, And Anonymous Speech, Thomas F. Cotter

ExpressO

A series of United States Supreme Court decisions establishes that the First Amendment provides a qualified right to speak and publish anonymously, or under a pseudonym. But the Court has never clearly defined the scope of this right. As a result, lower courts have been left with little guidance when it comes to dealing both with the Internet-fueled growth of torts and crimes committed by anonymous speakers, and with the increasing number of lawsuits aimed at silencing legitimate anonymous speech. In this Article, we provide both positive and normative foundations for a comprehensive approach to anonymous speech. We first draw …

The Final Battle For Preemption: The Fda And Prescription Drug Labeling Product Liability Actions, Mary J. Davis

ExpressO

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has promulgated a new regulation which revises the format for prescription drug labeling, and, in the process, has taken the position that the regulation displaces, or preempts, state products liability laws that seek to assess liability on the manufacturer for a label’s warning adequacy. In the FDA’s 100 year history, it has not taken the position that federal prescription drug labeling regulations preempt common law tort claims until the last few years, beginning with Motus v. Pfizer in 2002. This position, radical to many and rational to others, places federal preemption of prescription drug …

Protecting Rights Or Waiving Them? Why 'Negotiated Risk' Should Be Removed From Assisted Living Law, Eric M. Carlson

ExpressO

Assisted living facilities claim that negotiated risk agreements give residents the freedom to act against facility advice. On the contrary, negotiated risk was proposed originally to waive a facility’s liability for inadequate care, and liability waiver remains a significant component of negotiated risk.

This Article offers the first detailed legal analysis of state negotiated risk laws. Due to negotiated risk’s dueling definitions – based either on the against-facility-advice scenario or the inadequate care scenario – state law is marked by ambiguity and inconsistency. Currently, fifteen states address negotiated risk in law, and an additional state has developed a standardized negotiated …

Reassessing Damages In Securities Fraud Class Actions, Elizabeth C. Burch

ExpressO

No coherent doctrinal statement exists for calculating open-market damages for securities fraud class actions. Instead, courts have tried in vain to fashion common-law deceit and misrepresentation remedies to fit open-market fraud. The result is a relatively ineffective system with a hallmark feature: unpredictable damage awards. This poses a significant fraud deterrence problem from both a practical and a theoretical standpoint.

In 2005, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to clarify open-market damage principles and to facilitate earlier dismissal of cases without compensable economic losses. Instead, in Dura Pharmaceuticals v. Broudo, it further confused the damage issue by (1) perpetuating the …

Democracy And Tort Reform In The U.S.A., Christopher J. Roederer

ExpressO

Democracy in the United States of America is in decline. In much the same way that progressive tort reform was made possible by democratic gains since the 1950s, the current tort retrenchment has been made possible by our democratic losses since the 1980s. Just as tort reform in the 1960s and 1970s helped consolidate and protect our democratic gains, the tort “reforms” from the 1980s to the present have helped further consolidate and protect our rising plutocracy. After a brief introduction setting the stage in broad stroke for the argument that follows, part II draws on recent literature in the …

The Missing Theory Of Variable Selection In The Economic Analysis Of Tort Law, James M. Anderson

ExpressO

The Article argues that the economic analysis of tort law has yet to satisfactorily answer a critical threshold question: which of the many inputs that lead to an accident should be included in a court’s liability analysis? As a result of this missing theory, the economic analysis of tort law provides indeterminate prescriptions. The Article shows how three separate areas of the literature can be seen as being about the general problem of which variables to include in the liability test and the tension between short- and long-run optima. The Article proposes an analytical framework—a continuum from short to long …

Strict Liability And The Liberal Justice Theory Of Torts, Alan Calnan

ExpressO

Ask a group of tort scholars to explain the relationship between fault and strict liability and the responses are likely to be sharply split. An economist might reply that strict liability—assigned on the basis of efficiency—should be the rule and fault, if it is to apply at all, but a reluctant and occasional exception. A moralist, however, would likely give the opposite opinion—that fault, defined as deontological culpability, should be the rule and strict liability the exception.

Ironically, both economists and moralists often base their views on liberal principles. Economists rely on the political dimension of liberalism, arguing that government …

Public Services Meet Private Law, Michael I. Krauss

ExpressO

Public services are provided at various levels, and for various reasons, by governments to corporate and private citizens. Recently, an important movement in tort theory has sought to allow governments to recoup the cost of public services as tort damages from wrongdoers, especially from wrongdoers of the corporate variety. Much of the latest thrust in tort law, which consists of attorneys-general's suits against corporations, relies implicitly on a challenge to the common law's "free public services doctrine."

Recently, scholarship emanating largely from plaintiff-oriented sources has sought to appeal to free-market and law-and-economics scholars (who are often defense-oriented) by emphasizing the …

How The Other Half Lives (Revisited): Twenty Years Since Midler V. Ford - A Global Perspective On The Right Of Publicity, Alain Lapter

ExpressO

For celebrities, name and image are, arguably, two of their most valuable assets. From headlining a movie, to starring in a commercial, to endorsing a product, a celebrity’s persona is potentially worth thousands to millions of dollars. However, this intangible commodity’s worth is often siphoned off by those who appropriate a celebrity’s name or image without authorization or remuneration, thus potentially decreasing the property’s value. In order to stifle this unjust enrichment, celebrities greatly desire the absolute right to control the commercial exploitation of their name and likeness.

In this article, I examine the current state of the right of …

Applying Tort Theory To Information Technology, Marvin L. Longabaugh

ExpressO

In this article, I discuss the issue of whether torts attributable to Information Systems products, both hardware and software, should be subject to litigation as a contract action, a tort action, or both. I further suggest a protocol for attorneys and courts to consider when attempting to discern whether a particular cause of action is appropriate. Last, I briefly discuss whether the advent of certification programs for computer professionals should result in the courts reconsideration of the concept of computer malpractice.

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Statutes Of Repose And The Equal Protection Clause Of The 14th Amendment Of The U.S. Constitution, Garris G. Ference

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Governmental Immunity In Maryland: A Practitioner's Guide To Making And Defending Tort Claims , Karen J. Kruger

ExpressO

An article geared to practitioners examining current law related to governmental immunity; emphasis on Maryland statutory and common law; also addresses federal tort claims and federal civil rights claims.