Torts Commons^™

Lending A Hand: The Use Of The Mississippi Products Liability Act And Mississippi's Blood Shield Statute In Palermo V. Lifelink Found., Inc., Taylor Price

Mississippi College Law Review

The experience of undergoing a surgical procedure is one of the most vulnerable positions an average individual finds themselves in during his or her lifetime. The overall risk associated with this process is even greater when the surgery involves the removal or transfer of one or more of the body's organs or tissues. The principal event that concerned Palermo v. LifeLink Found., Inc. was a botched surgical operation featuring a human tissue implant performed in March 2005 on Richard Palermo. The tissue implant surgically inserted into Palermo's knee became bacterially infected shortly after the operation and required further injury, causing …

Torts And Personhood, Melissa Mortazavi

Arkansas Law Review

Perhaps more so than ever, legal personhood is contested. Part I of this Article lays out an overview of existing tort theories exposing the limitations of existing paradigms. This positions the reader to consider in Part II the core assertion of this paper: that a fundamental role of torts is to define personhood. As such, it explores the idea that a principal project that each tort case and litigant is engaged with is not truly about money, property, or even pain per se—it is about determining who is seen.

America’S “Kia Boys”: The Problem, Responses, And Recommendations, Drew Thornley

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

The landscape of automobile theft in the United States has undergone a dramatic transformation, marked by a notable surge in the theft of Kia and Hyundai vehicles. Once regarded as a routine occurrence, car thefts have taken on a novel dimension, propelled by a phenomenon driven by digital culture and social media virality. The thefts of these specific car brands have evolved into what is now widely recognized as the "Kia Challenge," a term echoing across popular platforms like TikTok. In this challenge, young teenage individuals, often referred to as the "Kia Boys" or variations thereof, orchestrate daring car heists, …

Anti-Patents, Roy Baharad, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ehud Gutte

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional wisdom has long perceived the patent and tort systems as separate legal entities, each tasked with a starkly different mission. Patent law rewards novel ideas; tort law deters harmful conduct. Against this backdrop, this Essay uncovers the opposing effects of patent and tort law on innovation, introducing the "injurer-innovator problem." Patent law incentivizes injurers --often uniquely positioned to make technological breakthroughs--by allowing them to profit from licensing their inventions to competitors. Yet tort law, by imposing liability for failures to invest in care, forces injurers to incur the cost of implementing their own innovations. When the cost of self-implementation …

Rising Tide: The Second Wave Of Climate Torts, Maximillian Scott Matiauda

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Fossil fuels and tobacco products share startling similarities. Both enjoy ubiquity, enable their users to keep pace with the ever-increasing demands of civilization, and choke the life out of those who partake and those who merely look on. The comparison extends to legal battles against their respective industries, as evidenced by a new wave of tort litigation in the federal courts of the United States. In a time where climate change was still establishing consensus, states took up the charge against tobacco companies who had successfully defended against private lawsuits over the deleterious health effects of tobacco. Those suits culminated …

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 …

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

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

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 …

Differentiating Strict Products Liability’S Cost-Benefit Analysis From Negligence, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald J. Coleman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Dangerous products may give rise to colossal liability for commercial actors. Indeed, in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Johnson & Johnson v. Ingham, permitting a more than two billion dollar products liability damages award to stand. In his dissenting opinion in another recent products liability case, Air and Liquid Systems Corp. v. DeVries, Justice Gorsuch declared that “[t]ort law is supposed to be about aligning liability with responsibility.” However, in the products liability context, there have been ongoing debates concerning how best to set legal rules and standards on tort liability. Are general principles of …

Due Process Discontents In Mass-Tort Bankruptcy, J. Maria Glover

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Trolley Problems, Private Necessity, And The Duty To Rescue, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

Laidlaw v. Sage is generally, at best, an oddity in Torts casebooks today. A case that captured the imagination of New York newspaper readers at the time, Laidlaw involved an explosion that, William Laidlaw argued, the wealthy Russell Sage survived only because, at the last moment, he pulled Laidlaw in front of him to absorb the brunt of the blast. As taught in Torts classrooms, Laidlaw is either a case about the intent requirement for battery or a case about causation. But the case, assuming the plaintiff’s story was true, also provides an interesting window into what would seem to …

Sieracki Lives: A Portrait Of The Interplay Between Legislation And The Judicially Created General Maritime Law, Thomas C. Galligan Jr.

Journal Articles

In American maritime law, the interplay between the courts and Congress is complex and iterative. A significant body of American admiralty law, the general maritime law, has been judicially created and developed. But Congress has also enacted a number of important statutes governing maritime commerce and the rights of maritime workers, such as the Longshore and Harbor Worker’s Compensation Act (“LHWCA”). The back and forth between the courts and Congress in interpreting those statutes and gauging their impact on and consistency with the general maritime law is ongoing. One important area where the courts development of the general maritime law …

Idaho's Law Of Seduction, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

Seduction is a historical cause of action that permitted women's fathers to bring suit on their daughters' behalf in sexual assault and rape cases. This tort emerged long ago when the law's refusal to recognize women's agency left this as the only means of recovering damages in these cases. As time went on, the tort evolved, and women were eventually permitted to bring lawsuits for seduction on their own behalf. Today, most states have abolished seduction, along with other torts permitting recovery for damages arising from intimate conduct. One could be easily forgiven for thinking that such an archaic tort …

The Most Substantial Factor: Analysis Of Ambiguous Causation--Staub As Trustee Of Weeks V. Myrtle Lake Resort, Llc, 964 N.W.2d 614 (Minn. 2021), Hailey Oestreicher

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Defaming The President, Douglas B. Mckechnie

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Liability For Sexual Misconduct, Mike K. Steenson

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Litigating Partial Autonomy, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

Who is responsible when a semi-autonomous vehicle crashes? Automobile manufacturers claim that because Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) require constant human oversight even when autonomous features are active, the driver is always fully responsible when supervised autonomy fails. This Article argues that the automakers’ position is likely wrong both descriptively and normatively. On the descriptive side, current products liability law offers a pathway toward shared legal responsibility. Automakers, after all, have engaged in numerous marketing efforts to gain public trust in automation features. When drivers’ trust turns out to be misplaced, drivers are not always able to react in a …

Minding Accidents, Teneille R. Brown

University of Colorado Law Review

Tort doctrine states that breach is all about conduct. Unlike in the criminal law context, where jurors must engage in amateur mindreading to evaluate mens rea, jurors are told that they can assess civil negligence by looking only at the defendant’s external behavior. But this is false. Here I explain why, by incorporating the psychology of foresight. Foreseeability is at the heart of negligence—appearing as the primary test for duty, breach, and proximate cause. And yet, it has been called a “vexing morass” and a “malleable standard” because it is so poorly understood. This Article refines and advances the construct …

Climate Change And Modern State Common Law Nuisance And Trespass Tort Claims, Jack Wold-Mcgimsey

University of Colorado Law Review

This Comment examines the use of state common law tort claims to address climate change. The aim of this work is not to provide an in-depth examination of these issues, but rather to provide a contextualized and comprehensive overview of some of the most important issues in this field using modern cases actively being litigated. This Comment comes to the conclusion that the future of common law nuisance and trespass claims in the context of climate change is, for now, unclear. Given the national and global implications of climate change, courts may find that isolated states cannot set binding precedents …

Bittersweet: A Potential Avenue To International Tort Liability For American Companies In The Cocoa Supply Chain, Sara Leonhartsberger

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unsticking American Tort Theory, Benjamin Sundholm

University of Cincinnati Law Review

In the United States, the debate over the foundations of tort law is at an impasse. On one side of the dispute, economic theorists contend that tort law is primarily concerned with the forward-looking aim of maximizing societal wealth. The most prominent critics of this view claim that an economic analysis of tort law cannot explain the field’s backward-looking concern with achieving corrective justice by remedying wrongs. Despite the strength of this critique, economic theorists have a legitimate response available to them: corrective justice describes the reparative aspect of tort law, but it stops short of providing a justificatory account …

Construction Law: The English Route To Modern Construction Law, Vivian Ramsey

Arkansas Law Review

In this Article, I will look at the way that construction law has developed in the English common law world from its roots in the law of England and Wales. Whilst common law traditions are now applied to many jurisdictions, the number of jurisdictions in which English precedents are binding is now small. But, in many common law jurisdictions decisions of the English courts are still treated as “persuasive.” English decisions in the field of construction law have an extensive reach in terms of their persuasiveness. First, having a long-established court system, including a specialist court for 150 years, has …

A Simple Model Of Torts And Moral Wrongs, Steven Schaus

Notre Dame Law Review

According to the “standard model” of torts and moral wrongs—the model implicit in leading moral theories of tort law—tort law imposes genuine duties that are distinct from, and only roughly coincide with, our preexisting moral duties. A “tort,” on this model, is a distinctive kind of wrong, the breach of a tort-generated duty. In this Article, I suggest that moral theories of tort law start with a simpler story—one that dispenses with a distinct domain of tort-generated duties. According to what I call the “simple model” of torts and moral wrongs, tort law aims to recognize and respond directly to …

The Deep Architecture Of American Covid-19 Tort Reform 2020-21, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

The rapid emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic produced massive state actions to protect in public health through the exercise of the police powers by local, state and national governments. In the United States there were calls early in the crisis to exercise the state’s power over tort law: As early as April 2020, the American Tort Reform Association published a White Paper, Responding to the Coming Lawsuit Surge that called for “reasonable constraints on . . . lawsuits that pose an obstacle to the coronavirus response effort, place businesses in jeopardy, and further damage the economy.”

This article, prepared for …

Patient Decision Aids Improve Patient Safety And Reduce Medical Liability Risk, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Maine Law Review

Tort-based doctrines of informed consent have utterly failed to assure that patients understand the risks, benefits, and alternatives to the healthcare they receive. Fifty years of experience with the doctrine of informed consent have shown it to be an abject catastrophe. Most patients lack an even minimal understanding of their treatment options. But there is hope. Substantial evidence shows that patient decision aids (PDAs) and shared decision making can bridge the gap between the theory and practice of informed consent. These evidence-based educational tools empower patients to make decisions with significantly more knowledge and less decisional conflict than clinician-patient discussions …

Misreading Menetti: The Case Does Not Help You Avoid Liability For Your Own Fraud, Val D. Ricks

St. Mary's Law Journal

Several decades ago, an incorrect legal idea surfaced in Texas jurisprudence: that business entity actors are immune from liability for fraud that they themselves commit, as if the entity is solely responsible. Though the Supreme Court of Texas has rejected that result several times, it keeps coming back. The most recent manifestation is as a construction of Texas’s unique veil-piercing statute. Many lawyers have suggested that this view of the veil-piercing statute originated in Menetti v. Chavers, a San Antonio Court of Appeals case decided in 1998. Menetti has in fact played a prominent role in the movement to …

Emotional Distress Recovery For Mishandling Of Human Remains: A Fifty State Survey, Christopher Ogolla

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: The Third Restatement, Duty, And Foreseeability, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

The Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm (the “Third Restatement”) was adopted by the American Law Institute in 2010. The approach taken by the Third Restatement to negligence law excludes foreseeability from the duty determination and places it squarely as a relevant factor in the breach issue; it adopts the “but-for” standard for causation; and rejects proximate cause terminology, instead utilizing a scope of liability approach in which the key question is whether the harms that occurred were of the same general type that made the actor’s conduct tortious. Removal of foreseeability from the duty determination …

Tort Law: Cases And Commentaries, Samuel Beswick

All Faculty Publications

The law of obligations concerns the legal rights and duties owed between people. Three primary categories make up the common law of obligations: tort, contract, and unjust enrichment. This coursebook provides an introduction to tort law: the law that recognises and responds to civil wrongdoing. The material is arranged in two parts. Part I comprises §§1-11 and addresses intentional and dignitary torts and the overarching theories and goals of tort law. Part II comprises §§12-25 and addresses no-fault compensation schemes, negligence, nuisance, strict liability, and tort law’s place within our broader legal systems.

Themes explored within this coursebook include:

• …

Perceptions Of Justice In Multidistrict Litigation: Voices From The Crowd, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Margaret S. Williams

Scholarly Works

With all eyes on criminal justice reform, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly reshaped civil justice, undermining fundamental tenets of due process, procedural justice, attorney ethics, and tort law along the way. In 2020, the MDL caseload tripled that of the federal criminal caseload, one out of every two cases filed in federal civil court was an MDL case, and 97% of those were products liability like opioids, talc, and Roundup.

Ordinarily, civil procedure puts tort plaintiffs in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose who and where to sue, and what claims to bring. Procedural justice tells courts to ensure …

Anti-Subordination Torts, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

No abstract provided.