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Full-Text Articles in Law

Causation And "Legal Certainty" In Legal Malpractice Law, Vincent R. Johnson Jul 2018

Causation And "Legal Certainty" In Legal Malpractice Law, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

A line of California cases holds that causation of damages in legal malpractice actions must be proven with “legal certainty.” This Article argues that judicial references to legal certainty are ambiguous and threaten to undermine the fairness of legal malpractice litigation as a means for resolving lawyer-client disputes. Courts should eschew the language of legal certainty and plainly state that damages are recoverable if a legal malpractice plaintiff proves, by a preponderance of the evidence, that those losses were factually and proximately caused by the defendant’s breach of duty.


Accidents And Aggregates, Lee Anne Fennell May 2018

Accidents And Aggregates, Lee Anne Fennell

William & Mary Law Review

Tort law responds to discrete, harmful events—“accidents”—by converting unruly facts into a binary on/off judgment about liability. This operation, characteristic of much of law, resembles the “thresholding” process used to convert grayscale images to black and white. It embeds decisions about how to isolate and evaluate the sample of risk-related behavior connected to the accident. This Article focuses on the implicit but powerful role that aggregation—of behavior, precautions, and events—plays in the determination of liability. These aggregative choices determine how large a slice of an injurer’s conduct tort law will capture within its viewfinder, and how tight the causal connection …


Palsgraf V. Long Island R.R.: Its Historical Context, William E. Nelson Jan 2018

Palsgraf V. Long Island R.R.: Its Historical Context, William E. Nelson

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.