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Articles 31 - 60 of 861
Full-Text Articles in Law
An Information Theory Of Willful Breach, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
An Information Theory Of Willful Breach, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Michigan Law Review
Should willful breach be sanctioned more severely than inadvertent breach? Strikingly, there is sharp disagreement on this matter within American legal doctrine, in legal theory, and in comparative law. Within law-and-economics, the standard answer is "no "-breach should be subject to strict liability. Fault should not raise the magnitude of liability in the same way that no fault does not immune the breaching party from liability. In this paper, we develop an alternative law-and-economics account, which justifies supercompensatory damages for willful breach. Willful breach, we argue, reveals information about the "true nature" of the breaching party-that he is more likely …
Could Breach Of Contract Be Immoral?, Seana Shiffrin
Could Breach Of Contract Be Immoral?, Seana Shiffrin
Michigan Law Review
Some scholars defend the contract law's ban on punitive damage awards on the grounds that breach of contract, in itself, is not morally wrong. In this Article, I offer two responses. First, I refute one prevalent argument of Steven Shavell's in support of this view. Shavell argues that contractual breach is not immoral in those cases in which the legal regime would offer expectation damages because the contracting parties would not have agreed to require performance had they explicitly deliberated about the circumstances occasioning the breach. I criticize his argument for failing to justify this hypothetical-contract approach and, in any …
Fault At The Contract-Tort Interface, Roy Kreitner
Fault At The Contract-Tort Interface, Roy Kreitner
Michigan Law Review
The formative period in the history of contract and tort (in the second half of the nineteenth century) may be characterized by the cleavage of contract and tort around the concept of fault: tort modernized by moving from strict liability to a regime of "no liability without fault," while contract moved toward strict liability. The opposing attitudes toward fault are puzzling at first glance. Nineteenth-century scholars of private law offered explanations for the opposition, reasoning that alternative ideas about fault account for the different character of state involvement in enforcing private law rights: tort law governs liabilities imposed by law …
Foreword: Fault In American Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, Ariel Porat
Foreword: Fault In American Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, Ariel Porat
Michigan Law Review
The basic rule of liability in tort law is fault. The basic rule of liability in contract law is no fault. This is perhaps one of the most striking divides within private law, the most important difference between the law of voluntary and nonvoluntary obligations. It is this fault line (speaking equivocally) that the present Symposium explores. Is it a real divide-two opposite branches of liability within private law-or is it merely a rhetorical myth? How can it be justified? As law-and-economics scholars, this fault/no-fault divide between contract and tort is all the more puzzling. In law and economics, legal …
Let Us Never Blame A Contract Breaker, Richard A. Posner
Let Us Never Blame A Contract Breaker, Richard A. Posner
Michigan Law Review
Holmes famously proposed a "no fault" theory of contract law: a contract is an option to perform or pay, and a "breach" is therefore not a wrongful act, but merely triggers the duty to pay liquidated or other damages. I elaborate the Holmesian theory, arguing that fault terminology in contract law, such as "good faith," should be given pragmatic economic interpretations, rather than be conceived of in moral terms. I further argue that contract doctrines should normally be alterable only on the basis of empirical investigations.
The Role Of Fault In Contract Law: Unconscionability, Unexpected Circumstances, Interpretation, Mistake, And Nonperformance, Melvin Aron Eisenberg
The Role Of Fault In Contract Law: Unconscionability, Unexpected Circumstances, Interpretation, Mistake, And Nonperformance, Melvin Aron Eisenberg
Michigan Law Review
It is often asserted that contract law is based on strict liability, not fault. This assertion is incorrect. Fault is a basic building block of contract law, and pervades the field. Some areas of contract law, such as unconscionability, are largely fault based. Other areas, such as interpretation, include sectors that are fault based in significant part. Still other areas, such as liability for nonperformance, superficially appear to rest on strict liability, but actually rest in significant part on the fault of breaking a promise without sufficient excuse. Contract law discriminates between two types of fault: the violation of strong …
The Fault That Lies Within Our Contract Law, George M. Cohen
The Fault That Lies Within Our Contract Law, George M. Cohen
Michigan Law Review
Scholars and courts typically describe and defend American contract law as a system of strict liability, or liability without fault. Strict liability generally means that the reason for nonperformance does not matter in determining whether a contracting party breached. Strict liability also permeates the doctrines of contract damages, under which the reason for the breach does not matter in determining the measure of damages, and the doctrines of contract formation, under which the reason for failing to contract does not matter In my Article, I take issue with the strict liability paradigm, as I have in my prior work on …
Willfulness Versus Expectation: A Promisor-Based Defense Of Willful Breach Doctrine, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman
Willfulness Versus Expectation: A Promisor-Based Defense Of Willful Breach Doctrine, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman
Michigan Law Review
Willful breach doctrine should be a major embarrassment to contract law. If the default remedy for breach is expectation damages designed to put the injured promisee in the position she would have been in if the contract had been performed, then the promisor's behavior-the reason for the breach-looks to be irrelevant in assessing damages. And yet the cases are full of references to "willful" breaches, which seem often to be treated more harshly than ordinary ones based on the promisor's bad/willful conduct. Our explanation is that willful breaches are best understood as those that should be prevented or deterred because …
When Is A Willful Breach "Willful"? The Link Between Definitions And Damages, Richard Craswell
When Is A Willful Breach "Willful"? The Link Between Definitions And Damages, Richard Craswell
Michigan Law Review
The existing literature on willful breach has not been able to define what should count as "willful." I argue here that any definition we adopt has implications for just how high damages should be raised in those cases where a breach qualifies as willful. As a result, both of these issues-the definition of "willful," and the measure of damages for willful breach-need to be considered simultaneously. Specifically, if a definition of "willful" excludes all breachers who behaved efficiently, then in theory we can raise the penalty on the remaining inefficient breachers to any arbitrarily high level ("throw the book at …
The Many Faces Of Fault In Contract Law: Or How To Do Economics Right, Without Really Trying, Richard A. Epstein
The Many Faces Of Fault In Contract Law: Or How To Do Economics Right, Without Really Trying, Richard A. Epstein
Michigan Law Review
Modern law often rests on the assumption that a uniform cost-benefit formula is the proper way to determine fault in ordinary contract disputes. This Article disputes that vision by defending the view that different standards of fault are appropriate in different contexts. The central distinction is one that holds parties in gratuitous transactions only to the standard of care that they bring to their own affairs, while insisting on the higher objective standard of ordinary care in commercial transactions. That bifurcation leads to efficient searches. Persons who hold themselves out in particular lines of business in effect warrant their ability …
Are Artificial Tans The New Cigarette? How Plaintiffs Can Use The Lessons Of Tobacco Litigation In Bringing Claims Against The Indoor Tanning Industry, Andrea Y. Loh
Michigan Law Review
Indoor tanning salons have grown significantly in popularity during recent years. Scientific research has revealed a strong link between skin cancer and ultraviolet light exposure from indoor tanning lamps. Despite such dangers, federal regulations place minimal restrictions on the labeling of indoor tanning lamps. Indoor tanning salons work vigorously to dispel notions of a link to skin cancer, often falsely promoting various health benefits of indoor tanning. The first lawsuit for injuries resulting from indoor tanning was recently filed against an indoor tanning salon, and other such litigation is poised to follow. This Note examines three potential tort claims against …
Torts And Innovation, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
Torts And Innovation, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
Michigan Law Review
This Essay exposes and analyzes a hitherto overlooked cost of tort law: its adverse effect on innovation. Tort liability for negligence, defective products, and medical malpractice is determined by reference to custom. We demonstrate that courts' reliance on custom and conventional technologies as the benchmark of liability chills innovation and distorts its path. Specifically, recourse to custom taxes innovators and subsidizes replicators of conventional technologies. We explore the causes and consequences of this phenomenon and propose two possible ways to modify tort law in order to make it more welcoming to innovation.
Is There A Duty?: Limiting College And University Liability For Student Suicide, Susanna G. Dyer
Is There A Duty?: Limiting College And University Liability For Student Suicide, Susanna G. Dyer
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues that nonclinician administrators employed by institutions of higher education do not have a special relationship with their students such that they have a duty to act with reasonable care to prevent a foreseeable student suicide. Courts that have in recent years ruled to the contrary have done so by incorrectly basing their duty-of-care analysis on foreseeability of harm alone. With an eye toward a proper duty-of-care analysis, this Note analyzes multiple factors to reach its conclusion, including the ideal relationship between colleges and their students and the burden on and capability of colleges to protect their students …
What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Mass Torts?, Anthony J. Sebok
What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Mass Torts?, Anthony J. Sebok
Michigan Law Review
Twenty years ago, Deborah Hensler and a team of scholars at the RAND Corporation's Institute for Civil Justice issued a report entitled Trends in Tort Litigation: The Story Behind the Statistics. Pressure had been mounting both in the business community and the Republican Party to "reform" tort law throughout the 1980s. There was concern that Americans "egged on by avaricious lawyers, sue[d] too readily, and irresponsible juries and activist judges wayla[id] blameless businesses at enormous cost to social and economic well-being." The RAND report argued that the real risk of a torts "explosion" came from the world of mass …
Scandal, Sukyandaru, And Chouwen, Benjamin L. Liebman
Scandal, Sukyandaru, And Chouwen, Benjamin L. Liebman
Michigan Law Review
This Review proceeds in four parts. Part I describes West's account of scandal in Japan and the United States and explores some of the ramifications of his account. Part II examines the formation of scandal in contemporary China. Part III compares scandal in China with West's conclusions about scandal in Japan and the United States. Part IV discusses defamation litigation in China, with a view to adding further comparative insight to West's discussion of Japanese libel suits.
Limiting A Constitutional Tort Without Probably Cause: First Amendment Retaliatory Arrest After Hartman, Colin P. Watson
Limiting A Constitutional Tort Without Probably Cause: First Amendment Retaliatory Arrest After Hartman, Colin P. Watson
Michigan Law Review
Federal law provides a cause of action for individuals who are the target of adverse state action taken in retaliation for their exercise of First Amendment rights. Because these constitutional torts are "easy to allege and hard to disprove," they raise difficult questions concerning the proper balance between allowing meaningful access to the courts and protecting government agents from frivolous and vexatious litigation. In its recent decision in Hartman v. Moore, the U.S. Supreme Court tipped the scales in favor of the state in one subset of First Amendment retaliation actions by holding that plaintiffs in actions for retaliatory …
Offsetting Risks, Ariel Porat
Offsetting Risks, Ariel Porat
Michigan Law Review
Under prevailing tort law, an injurer who must choose between Course of Action A, which creates a risk of 500 (there is a probability of .1 that a harm of 5000 will result), and Course of Action B, which creates a risk of 400 (there is a probability of.] that a harm of 4000 will result), and who negligently opts for the former will be held liable for the entire harm of 5000 that materializes. This full liability forces the injurer to pay damages that are five times higher than would be necessary to internalize the risk of 100 that …
Now, Later, Or Never: Applying Asymmetric Discount Rates In Nuisance Remedies And Federal Regulations, Yang Wang
Michigan Law Review
Part I of this Note reviews recent literature on the need for asymmetric discount rates in cost-benefit analysis. It observes that even though scholars disagree on the precise value of the appropriate discount rate, many agree that future costs and benefits must be discounted at different rates. Part II then constructs a simple model, consisting of two activities competing for the same resource, and analyzes the consequences of asymmetric discounting under this model. This Part proposes that, to maximize the joint social utility, the resource should be time divided between the competing activities rather than permanently allocated to one or …
Proximate Cause In Constitutional Torts: Holding Interrogators Liable For Fifth Amendment Violations At Trial, Joel Flaxman
Proximate Cause In Constitutional Torts: Holding Interrogators Liable For Fifth Amendment Violations At Trial, Joel Flaxman
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues for the approach taken by the Sixth Circuit in McKinley: a proper understanding of the Fifth Amendment requires holding that an officer who coerces a confession that is used at trial to convict a defendant in violation of the right against self-incrimination should face liability for the harm of conviction and imprisonment. Part I examines how the Supreme Court and the circuits have applied the concept of common law proximate causation to constitutional torts and argues that lower courts are wrong to blindly adopt common law rules without reference to the constitutional rights at stake. It …
Legal Fictions In Pierson V. Post, Andrea Mcdowell
Legal Fictions In Pierson V. Post, Andrea Mcdowell
Michigan Law Review
American courts and citizens generally take the importance of private property for granted. Scholars have sought to explain its primacy using numerous legal doctrines, including natural law, the Lockean principle of a right to the product of one's labor, Law & Economics theories about the incentives created by property ownership, and the importance of bright line rules. The leading case on the necessity of private property, Pierson v. Post, makes all four of these points. This Article argues that Pierson has been misunderstood. Pierson was in fact a defective torts case that the judges shoe-horned into a property mold …
Choice, Consent, And Cycling: The Hidden Limitations Of Consent, Leo Katz
Choice, Consent, And Cycling: The Hidden Limitations Of Consent, Leo Katz
Michigan Law Review
Most legal scholars assume that if V consents to allow D to do something to him, such consent makes D's actions legally and morally acceptable. To be sure, they are willing to make an exception when consent is given under a specified list of conditions: Force, fraud, incompetence, third-party effects, unequal bargaining power, commodification, paternalism - all of these may be grounds for rejecting the validity of V's consent. We might call scholars who take this view of consent quasi-libertarians. In this Article, I argue against the quasi-libertarian view of consent. My central claim is that the validity of consent …
Opting Out Of Liability: The Forthcoming, Near-Total Demise Of The Modern Class Action, Myriam Gilles
Opting Out Of Liability: The Forthcoming, Near-Total Demise Of The Modern Class Action, Myriam Gilles
Michigan Law Review
It is reasonable to expect that courts will demonstrate great solicitude for the recent innovation that I term "collective action waivers" - i.e., contractual provisions contained within arbitration agreements whereby consumers and others waive their rights to participate in any form of collective litigation or class arbitration. The history of mass tort class actions and the hegemonic expansion of pro-arbitration jurisprudence compel this conclusion. And, as the now-dominant economic model of contract law has moved the focus of courts from the value of consent to the value of efficiency, arbitration agreements found in all manner of shrink-wrap, scroll-text and bill-stuffer …
Uncertainty And Informed Choice: Unmasking Daubert, Margaret A. Berger, Aaron D. Twerski
Uncertainty And Informed Choice: Unmasking Daubert, Margaret A. Berger, Aaron D. Twerski
Michigan Law Review
This Article will first examine why it is that plaintiffs have been unable to prove causation under the Daubert guidelines in toxic tort litigation. Second, it will look at the two existing models for informed choice litigation medical malpractice and products liability-and demonstrate why neither of these models gives toxic tort plaintiffs a fair opportunity to recover for the deprivation of patient autonomy against drug manufacturers who have breached their duty to warn of known or knowable risks. Finally, this Article will explore the elements of a causation-free informed choice cause of action. It will suggest the appropriate standard for …
Government Corruption And The Right Of Access To Courts, Una A. Kim
Government Corruption And The Right Of Access To Courts, Una A. Kim
Michigan Law Review
This Note addresses the question left unanswered in Harbury: whether these denial of access-to-courts cases, which Justice Souter termed "backward-looking" access claims, are valid exercises of a constitutional right. Backward-looking access claims such as Harbury's differ from traditional denial of access-to-courts claims in that their aim is not to remove impediments to bringing causes of action in the future. Rather, backward-looking access claims allege that a suit that could have been filed in the past was not brought or was not litigated effectively, because access to the courts was at that time denied or obstructed by government officials. …
Why Don't Doctors & Lawyers (Strangers In The Night) Get Their Act Together?, Frances H. Miller
Why Don't Doctors & Lawyers (Strangers In The Night) Get Their Act Together?, Frances H. Miller
Michigan Law Review
Health care in America is an expensive, complicated, inefficient, tangled mess - everybody says so. Patients decry its complexity, health care executives bemoan its lack of coherence, physicians plead for universal coverage to simplify their lives so they can just get on with taking care of patients, and everyone complains about health care costs. The best health care in the world is theoretically available here, but we deliver and pay for it in some of the world's worst ways. Occam's razor ("Among competing hypotheses, favor the simplest one") is of little help here. There are no simple hypotheses - everything …
The New Privacy, Paul M. Schwartz, William M. Treanor
The New Privacy, Paul M. Schwartz, William M. Treanor
Michigan Law Review
In 1964, as the welfare state emerged in full force in the United States, Charles Reich published The New Property, one of the most influential articles ever to appear in a law review. Reich argued that in order to protect individual autonomy in an "age of governmental largess," a new property right in governmental benefits had to be recognized. He called this form of property the "new property." In retrospect, Reich, rather than anticipating trends, was swimming against the tide of history. In the past forty years, formal claims to government benefits have become more tenuous rather than more secure. …
Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Michigan Law Review
In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, determined the heliocentric design of the solar system. Copernicus was motivated in large part by the conviction that Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric astronomical model, which dominated scientific thought at that time, was too incoherent, complex, and convoluted to be true. Hence, Copernicus made a point of making his model coherent, simple, and elegant. Nearly three and a half centuries later, at the height of the impressionist movement, the French painter Claude Monet set out to depict the Ruen Cathedral in a series of twenty paintings, each presenting the cathedral in a different light. Monet's …
Locating Inevitable Disclosure's Place In Trade Secret Analysis, Jennifer L. Saulino
Locating Inevitable Disclosure's Place In Trade Secret Analysis, Jennifer L. Saulino
Michigan Law Review
For ten years, William Redmond, Jr., worked for PepsiCo, the maker of the sports drink All-Sport. Redmond's status as General Manager gave him access to trade secrets. PepsiCo protected those trade secrets by contract, and, as is typical, PepsiCo required Redmond to sign a confidentiality agreement covering all "confidential information relating to the business of [PepsiCo]." This confidentiality agreement, like most of its kind, protected the company from the danger that an employee who knew secret information would change jobs and disclose that information. In late 1994, Redmond accepted a position with Quaker's Gatorade division, a major competitor of PepsiCo's …
Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz
Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz
Michigan Law Review
Jules Coleman's The Practice of Principle serves as a focal point for current, newly intensified debates in legal theory, and provides some of the deepest, most sustained reflections on methodology that legal theory has seen. Coleman is one of the leading legal philosophers in the Anglo-American world, and his writings on tort theory, contract theory, the normative foundations of law and economics, social choice theory, and analytical jurisprudence have been the point of departure for much of the most interesting activity in the field for the last three decades. Indeed, the origin of this book lies in Oxford University's invitation …
Optimal Delegation And Decoupling In The Design Of Liability Rules, Ian M. Ayres, Paul M. Goldbart
Optimal Delegation And Decoupling In The Design Of Liability Rules, Ian M. Ayres, Paul M. Goldbart
Michigan Law Review
Calabresi and Melamed began a scholarly revolution by showing that legal entitlements have two readily distinguishable forms of protection: property rules and liability rules. These two archetypal forms protect an entitlement holder's interest in markedly different ways - via deterrence or compensation. Property rules protect entitlements by trying to deter others from taking. Liability rules, on the other hand, protect entitlements not by deterring but by trying to compensate the victim of nonconsensual takings. Accordingly, the compensatory impetus behind liability rules focuses on the takee's welfare - making sure the sanction is sufficient to compensate the takee. The deterrent impetus …