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Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Law
Differentiating Strict Products Liability’S Cost-Benefit Analysis From Negligence, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald J. Coleman
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 …
Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, Anthony Godwin
Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, Anthony Godwin
Seattle University Law Review
Service members in the armed forces are bound by a different set of rules when compared to other U.S. citizens. Some of the normal safeguards and protections that civilians enjoy are much more restrictive for military service members, and this is generally for a good reason. Such restrictions are partly due to the complex demands and needs of the United States military. Congress and the President have entrusted military commanders with special powers that enable them to handle minor violations of law without needing to go through a full judicial proceeding. Non-judicial punishments (NJP), also known as Article 15s, are …
Newsroom: Can Court 'Restore Fundamental Liberties'? 03-23-2016, Sheldon Whitehouse, David A. Logan
Newsroom: Can Court 'Restore Fundamental Liberties'? 03-23-2016, Sheldon Whitehouse, David A. Logan
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Newsroom: Logan On Kenneth Feinberg 03-12-2016, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Newsroom: Logan On Kenneth Feinberg 03-12-2016, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Keeping Cases From Black Juries: An Empirical Analysis Of How Race, Income Inequality, And Regional History Affect Tort Law, Donald G. Gifford, Brian Jones
Keeping Cases From Black Juries: An Empirical Analysis Of How Race, Income Inequality, And Regional History Affect Tort Law, Donald G. Gifford, Brian Jones
Faculty Scholarship
This Article presents an empirical analysis of how race, income inequality, the regional history of the South, and state politics affect the development of tort law. Beginning in the mid-1960s, most state appellate courts rejected doctrines such as contributory negligence that traditionally prevented plaintiffs’ cases from reaching the jury. We examine why some, mostly Southern states did not join this trend.
To enable cross-state comparisons, we design an innovative Jury Access Denial Index (JADI) that quantifies the extent to which each state’s tort doctrines enable judges to dismiss cases before they reach the jury. We then conduct a multivariate analysis …
Lawyers On Trial: Juror Hostility To Defendants In Legal Malpractice Trials, Herbert M. Kritzer, Neil Vidmar
Lawyers On Trial: Juror Hostility To Defendants In Legal Malpractice Trials, Herbert M. Kritzer, Neil Vidmar
Faculty Scholarship
In contrast to medical malpractice, legal malpractice is a phenomenon that has attracted little attention from empirically-oriented scholars. This paper is part of a larger study of legal malpractice claiming and litigation. Given the evidence on the frequency of legal malpractice claims, there are surprisingly few legal malpractice cases that result in jury verdicts. There are many possible explanations for this, one of which reflects the perception that lawyers are held in such low esteem by potential jurors that they risk harsh treatment by jurors when they are defendants in legal malpractice trials. Because we could find no empirical evidence …
An Exploration Of “Non-Economic” Damages In Civil Jury Awards, Herbert M. Kritzer, Guangya Liu, Neil Vidmar
An Exploration Of “Non-Economic” Damages In Civil Jury Awards, Herbert M. Kritzer, Guangya Liu, Neil Vidmar
Faculty Scholarship
Using three primary data sources plus three supplemental sources discussed in an appendix, this paper examines how well non-economic damages could be predicted by economic damages and at how the ratio of non-economic damages to economic damages changed as the magnitude of the economic damages awarded by juries increased. We found a mixture of consistent and inconsistent patterns across our various datasets. One fairly consistent pattern was the tendency for the ratio of non-economic to economic damages to decline as the amount of economic damages increased. Moreover, the variability of the ratio also tended to decline as the amount of …
Big Business Beware: Punitive Damages Do Not Violate Fourteenth Amendment According To Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. V. Haslip, Christopher V. Carlyle
Big Business Beware: Punitive Damages Do Not Violate Fourteenth Amendment According To Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. V. Haslip, Christopher V. Carlyle
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Walking The Invisible Line Of Punitive Damages: Txo Production Corp. V. Alliance Resources Corp. , Nancy G. Dragutsky
Walking The Invisible Line Of Punitive Damages: Txo Production Corp. V. Alliance Resources Corp. , Nancy G. Dragutsky
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Split-Recovery: A Constitutional Answer To The Punitive Damage Dilemma, Clay R. Stevens
Split-Recovery: A Constitutional Answer To The Punitive Damage Dilemma, Clay R. Stevens
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Another Jackpot (In)Justice: Verdict Variability And Issue Preclusion In Mass Torts, Byron G. Stier
Another Jackpot (In)Justice: Verdict Variability And Issue Preclusion In Mass Torts, Byron G. Stier
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Rough Justice, Alexandra Lahav
Rough Justice, Alexandra Lahav
Alexandra D. Lahav
This Essay offers a new justification for rough justice. Rough justice, as I use the term here, is the attempt to resolve large numbers of cases by using statistical methods to give plaintiffs a justifiable amount of recovery. It replaces the trial, which most consider the ideal process for assigning value to cases. Ordinarily rough justice is justified on utilitarian grounds. But rough justice is not only efficient, it is also fair. In fact, even though individual litigation is often held out as the sine qua non of process, rough justice does a better job at obtaining fair results for …
Juries And Medical Malpractice Claims: Empirical Facts Versus Myths, Neil Vidmar
Juries And Medical Malpractice Claims: Empirical Facts Versus Myths, Neil Vidmar
Faculty Scholarship
Juries in medical malpractice trials are viewed as incompetent, anti-doctor, irresponsible in awarding damages to patients, and casting a threatening shadow over the settlement process. Several decades of systematic empirical research yields little support for these claims. This article summarizes those findings. Doctors win about three cases of four that go to trial. Juries are skeptical about inflated claims. Jury verdicts on negligence are roughly similar to assessments made by medical experts and judges. Damage awards tend to correlate positively with the severity of injury. There are defensible reasons for large damage awards. Moreover, the largest awards are typically settled …
Toward A Trinitarian Theory Of Products Liability, Amelia J. Uelmen
Toward A Trinitarian Theory Of Products Liability, Amelia J. Uelmen
Amelia J Uelmen
No abstract provided.
Contracting With Tortfeasors: Mandatory Arbitration Clauses And Personal Injury Claims, Elizabeth G. Thornburg
Contracting With Tortfeasors: Mandatory Arbitration Clauses And Personal Injury Claims, Elizabeth G. Thornburg
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
People thinking about contractual arbitration clauses usually envision the resulting disputes as contractual in nature. However, there is also a group of cases in which the clauses are used to compel arbitration of personal injury claims. This article examines those cases, including the impact of the Federal Arbitration Act on their enforcement. Next, the article considers the ways in which these pre-dispute, mandatory arbitration clauses can disturb the traditional values of procedural justice, contractual fairness, and the enforcement of tort-based duties. Finally, the article proposes changes in the law of arbitration and evaluates whether such changes are politically feasible.
On Determining Negligence: Hand Formula Balancing, The Reasonable Person Standard, And The Jury, Stephen G. Gilles
On Determining Negligence: Hand Formula Balancing, The Reasonable Person Standard, And The Jury, Stephen G. Gilles
Vanderbilt Law Review
trial practice ensure that the operational meaning of negligence is largely determined by juries in particular cases, rather than by the doctrines stated in appellate decisions (and restated in Restatements of Torts). Even if these practices are misguided, it is clear that no Restatement could repudiate them without drastically departing from the American Law Institute's ("ALI") traditional position that Restatements are predominantly positive and only incrementally normative.
On the other hand, the conception of negligence articulated in the Restatement (First) of Torts ("Restatement (First)")--which was carried over virtually unchanged into the Restatement (Second) of Torts ("Restatement (Second)"), and hence has …
Reflections On The Historical Context Of Section 402a, Oscar S. Gray
Reflections On The Historical Context Of Section 402a, Oscar S. Gray
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.
Retribution And Deterrence: The Role Of Punitive Damages In Products Liability Litigation, Richard C. Ausness
Retribution And Deterrence: The Role Of Punitive Damages In Products Liability Litigation, Richard C. Ausness
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Punitive damages constitute an award to an injured party above what is necessary to compensate for actual loss. This Article considers whether punitive damages are an effective means of promoting the goals of products liability law. Section I traces the use of punitive damages in products liability litigation from the early 1960's to the present time. Section II examines the traditional rationales for punitive damages and considers whether they are appropriate in the products liability context. Finally, Section III evaluates some of the measures that commentators have proposed to adapt more fully the concept of punitive damages to products liability …
A Comparative Negligence Checklist To Avoid Future Unnecessary Litigation, John M. Rogers, Randy Donald Shaw
A Comparative Negligence Checklist To Avoid Future Unnecessary Litigation, John M. Rogers, Randy Donald Shaw
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Systems of comparative negligence, whereby the negligence of a plaintiff serves to reduce rather than to preclude tort recovery in negligence, have been adopted in thirty-nine states. The common law rule that contributory negligence is an absolute bar to recovery is still the law in Kentucky, although modified by the doctrine of "last clear chance." Kentucky may soon join the trend toward comparative negligence, however. In the last legislative session, bills to adopt comparative negligence were introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. A hearing on this subject was held by the Interim Judiciary and Civil Procedure …
Damages-Pain And Suffering-Use Of A Mathematical Formula, Thomas D. Heekin S .Ed.
Damages-Pain And Suffering-Use Of A Mathematical Formula, Thomas D. Heekin S .Ed.
Michigan Law Review
Measurement of damages for pain and suffering is, in a sense, an attempt to measure the unmeasurable; yet as long as our law recognizes a right to recover for pain and suffering, the jury or judge must arrive at some concrete figure. The traditional approach of simply instructing the jury that they should arrive at a reasonable amount provides little, if any, guidance. The question is whether this approach, nevertheless, remains the best of a bad lot of alternatives. If more guidance is desirable, what can be accomplished within the framework of our present system? The mathematical formula discussed in …
A Comment On The Law Of Torts, Luke K. Cooperrider
A Comment On The Law Of Torts, Luke K. Cooperrider
Michigan Law Review
The recently-published treatise by Professors Harper and James, The Law of Torts, which is the subject of this article is no routine publication. It is not a mere recasting in different language of an already familiar synthesis; nor is it the kind of book one keeps around for casual reference. It is, rather, a statement of a philosophy of tort liability which, by reason of its consonance with much of the currently vocal thought in the field, and by reason of the powers of analysis and expression that the authors have brought to bear, is almost certainly destined to …
Negligence-Duty Of Care-Duty Of Possessor Of Land Conducting Activities Thereon To Keep A Lookout For Licensees, Duncan Noble
Negligence-Duty Of Care-Duty Of Possessor Of Land Conducting Activities Thereon To Keep A Lookout For Licensees, Duncan Noble
Michigan Law Review
Plaintiff, seeking employment, came onto the site of a road construction project under defendant's control as general contractor and posted by him with notices of construction and against trespassing. Plaintiff was struck by a materials truck backing, without lookout or warning, over the completed half of the road. On these facts the jury found that the truck was negligently operated and plaintiff prevailed. On appeal, held, affirmed. A contractor owes a duty of ordinary care to licensees in a case of "active," as distinguished from "passive" negligence. Evidence as to the mode of operating the truck and "likelihood" of …
Abstracts Of Recent Decisions, Benjamin M. Quigg, Jr.
Abstracts Of Recent Decisions, Benjamin M. Quigg, Jr.
Michigan Law Review
The abstracts consist merely of summaries of the facts and holdings of recent cases and are distinguished from the notes by the absence of discussion.
Contributory Negligence-Question Of Fact For Jury-Basis For Conclusion Of Jury
Contributory Negligence-Question Of Fact For Jury-Basis For Conclusion Of Jury
Indiana Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review
Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
Admiralty - Workmen's Compensation - Is a Hydroplane a Vessel? - Claimant was employed in the care and management of a hydroplane which was moored in navigable waters. The hydroplane began to drag anchor and drift toward the beach, where it was in danger of being wrecked. Claimant waded into the water and was struck by the propeller. Held, claimant is not entitled to compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Law, since a hydroplane while on navigable waters is a vessel, and therefore the jurisdiction of the admiralty excludes that of the State Industrial Commission. Reinhardt v. Newport Flying Service Corp. …