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Full-Text Articles in Law
Anti-Patents, Roy Baharad, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ehud Gutte
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 …
The Cost Of Guilty Breach: Willful Breach In M&A Contracts, Theresa Arnold, Amanda Dixon, Madison Whalen Sherrill, Hadar Tanne, Mitu Gulati
The Cost Of Guilty Breach: Willful Breach In M&A Contracts, Theresa Arnold, Amanda Dixon, Madison Whalen Sherrill, Hadar Tanne, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
The traditional framework of United States private law that every first-year student learns is that contracts and torts are different realms—contracts is the realm of strict liability and torts of fault. Contracts, we learn from the writings of Justice Holmes and Judge Posner, are best viewed as options; they give parties the option to perform or pay damages. The question we ask is whether, in the real world, that is indeed how contracting parties view things. Using a dataset made up of one thousand mergers and acquisitions (M&A) contracts and thirty in-depth interviews with M&A lawyers, we find that there …
Accessory Disloyalty: Comparative Perspectives On Substantial Assistance To Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Accessory Disloyalty: Comparative Perspectives On Substantial Assistance To Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
Culpable participation in a fiduciary's breach of duty is independently wrongful. Much about this contingent form of liability is open to dispute. In the United States, well-established general doctrine defines the elements requisite to establishing accessory liability, which is categorized as a tort and often referred to as "aiding-and abetting" liability. What's controversial is how the tort applies to particular categories of actors, most recently investment banks that advise boards of target companies in M&A transactions. In the United Kingdom, in contrast, accessory liability in connection with a breach of trust or fiduciary duty is controversial because the law is …
Culpable Participation In Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Culpable Participation In Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
This essay makes a case for the salience of tort law to fiduciary law, focusing on actors who culpably participate in a fiduciary's breach of duty, whether by inducing the breach or lending substantial assistance to it. Although the elements of this accessory tort are relatively settled in the United States, how the tort applies to particular categories of actors-most recently investment bankers who serve as M&A advisors-provokes controversy. The paper also explores the less developed terrain of primary actors who breach governance duties that are not fiduciary obligations because the entity's organizational documents eliminate fiduciary duties, as Delaware law …
Do Physicians Respond To Liability Standards?, Michael D. Frakes, Matthew Frank, Seth Seabury
Do Physicians Respond To Liability Standards?, Michael D. Frakes, Matthew Frank, Seth Seabury
Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, we explore the sensitivity in the clinical decisions of physicians to the standards of care expected of them under the law, drawing on the abandonment by states over time of rules holding physicians to standards determined by local customs and the contemporaneous adoption of national-standard rules. Using data on broad rates of surgical interventions at the county-by-year level from the Area Resource File, we find that local surgery rates converge towards national surgery rates upon the adoption of national-standard rules. Moreover, we find that these effects are more pronounced among rural counties.
The Uneasy And Often Unhelpful Interaction Of Tort Law And Constitutional Law In First Amendment Litigation, George C. Christie
The Uneasy And Often Unhelpful Interaction Of Tort Law And Constitutional Law In First Amendment Litigation, George C. Christie
Faculty Scholarship
There are increasing tensions between the First Amendment and the common law torts of intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and privacy. This Article discusses the conflicting interactions among the three models that are competing for primacy as the tort law governing expressive activities evolves to accommodate the requirements of the First Amendment. At one extreme there is the model that expression containing information which has been lawfully obtained that contains neither intentional falsehoods nor incitements to immediate violence can only be sanctioned in narrowly defined exceptional circumstances, even if that expression involves matters that are universally regarded as being …
Attorney General Bradford’S Opinion And The Alien Tort Statute, Curtis A. Bradley
Attorney General Bradford’S Opinion And The Alien Tort Statute, Curtis A. Bradley
Faculty Scholarship
In debates over the scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), one historical document has played an especially prominent role. This document is a short opinion by U.S. Attorney General William Bradford, issued in the summer of 1795, concerning the involvement of U.S. citizens in an attack by a French fleet on a British colony in Sierra Leone. Numerous academic articles, judicial opinions, and litigation briefs have invoked the Bradford opinion, for a variety of propositions, and the opinion was discussed by both sides in the oral argument before the Supreme Court in the first hearing in the pending ATS …
Brief Of Professors Of Law As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellants, Neil Vidmar, David Zevan
Brief Of Professors Of Law As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellants, Neil Vidmar, David Zevan
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Most Claims Settle: Implications For Alternative Dispute Resolution From A Profile Of Medical-Malpractice Claims In Florida, Neil Vidmar, Mirya Holman, Paul Lee
Most Claims Settle: Implications For Alternative Dispute Resolution From A Profile Of Medical-Malpractice Claims In Florida, Neil Vidmar, Mirya Holman, Paul Lee
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Causation In The Fiduciary Realm, Deborah A. Demott
Causation In The Fiduciary Realm, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Using Liability Rules To Stimulate Local Innovation In Developing Countries: Application To Traditional Knowledge, Jerome H. Reichman, Tracey Lewis
Using Liability Rules To Stimulate Local Innovation In Developing Countries: Application To Traditional Knowledge, Jerome H. Reichman, Tracey Lewis
Faculty Scholarship
When economists speak of an underlying legal structure that imposes an "absolute permission" requirement on access to, and use of, knowledge goods protected by intellectual property rights (IPRs), they typically have in mind the domestic patent and copyright laws. Under these and related intellectual property regimes, one cannot normally make use of a protected invention or creative work of authorship for specified purposes and for limited periods of time without prior authorization of the rights holder, typically in the form of a license.
When economists speak of liability rules, in contrast, they envision an underlying legal structure that permits third …
Civil Liability For Pure Economic Loss Under American Tort Law, Herbert Bernstein
Civil Liability For Pure Economic Loss Under American Tort Law, Herbert Bernstein
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Understanding The Malpractice Wars, Thomas B. Metzloff
Understanding The Malpractice Wars, Thomas B. Metzloff
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.