Law Commons^™

A Century Of Change In Personal Injury Law, Stephen D. Sugarman

Stephen D Sugarman

The 20th century witnessed enormous change in American personal injury law. Over the past 100 years, torts has emerged out of a largely ineffective backwater of the law. Today, tort doctrine has coalesced around a robust law of negligence, anchored not only in contemporary concerns about fairness, but also in considerations of loss spreading and safety promotion. Over the course of the 20th century, cultural change, change in the legal and other professions, changes in civil procedure and evidence law, the development of liability insurance, and more have made it both much easier and far more natural for accident victims …

The Floodgates Of Strict Liability: Bursting Reservoirs And The Adoption Of Fletcher V. Rylands In The Guided Age, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

Part I presents an overview of Rylands v. Fletcher and then discusses the phases of the American response: the initial acceptance; the Northeastern rejections in the 1870s, which have been the basis for the erroneous scholarly conclusions; and the overlooked tide of acceptances across the country, beginning in the late 1880s and increasing in the 1890s. Part II places this wave of acceptance in its historical context of changing social forces, although these brief sketches are not the primary emphasis of this Note. First, during a period of rapid urbanization, a small number of courts sought to protect residential areas …

Products Liability: User Misconduct Defenses, David G. Owen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Drowning In A Sea Of Contract: Application Of The Economic Loss Rule To Fraud And Negligent Misrepresentation Claims, R. Joseph Barton

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dual Drilling Co. V. Mills Equipment Investments, Inc. - A Statement About Conversion Or A Statement About The Concept Of Fault?, Mark Fernandez

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Suing States For Money: Constitutional Remedies After Alden And Florida Prepaid, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

On June 23, 1999, the Supreme Court handed down three noteworthy decisions bearing on the law of constitutional remedies. Alden v. Maine struck down an attempt by Congress, acting under its Article I powers, to subject states to suits in state court on federal statutory grounds. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank curbed Congress' power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to authorize suits against state governments on constitutional grounds, reasoning that a case cannot be made for the federal cause of action unless state law remedies are inadequate. A companion case, College Savings Bank …

Intervention In Public Law Litigation: The Environmental Paradigm, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

Litigation which Chayes labeled “public law litigation” grew especially quickly in the decade immediately before Chayes wrote his article. This growth was due, in no small part, to the 1966 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. These amendments introduced a more transactional approach to litigation and made the rules concerning party structure more flexible. In particular, the amendments modified Rule 19, which governs joinder of nonparties by the parties to the suit; Rule 23, which governs class action lawsuits; and Rule 24, which governs intervention by nonparties into ongoing litigation. Using the jurisprudence that has developed concerning intervention …

Comparative Fault & Solidary Delictual Obligations: On Further Consideration, William D. Grimley

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of "Exceptional" Statutes On Civil Litigation In Minnesota, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the treatment of “exceptional” statutes--statutes intended to protect a specific class of persons against their own inability to protect themselves--by the Minnesota appellate courts. After an analysis of the origins of the negligence per se doctrine in Minnesota, the article briefly examines the relationship between negligence per se and common law negligence. Then, following a brief historical background discussion of earlier cases involving exceptional statutes, the article focuses on individual cases in which the exceptional statutes are implicated. The goal of the article is to determine whether the law the supreme court developed has been consistently adhered …

"Waive" Goodbye To Tort Liability: A Proposal To Remove Paternalism From Product Sales Transactions, Richard C. Ausness

San Diego Law Review

This Article argues that waivers of tort liability should be permitted in connection with product sales. Currently, sellers cannot limit their liability under tort law for personal injuries caused by defective products even though such waivers are allowed, albeit reluctantly, under principles of negligence and warranty law.

Ftc Unfairness: An Essay, Stephen Calkins

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Quiet Demise Of Deference To Custom: Malpractice Law At The Millenium, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

According to conventional wisdom, tort law allows physicians to set their own standard of care. While defendants in ordinary tort actions are expected to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances, physicians traditionally have needed only to conform to the customs of their peers. However, judicial deference to physician customs is eroding. Gradually, quietly and relentlessly, state courts are withdrawing this legal privilege. Already, a dozen states have expressly rejected deference to medical customs and another nine, although not directly addressing the role of custom, have rephrased their standard of care in terms of the reasonable physician, rather than compliance with …

Employers Beware: South Carolina's Public Policy Exception To The At-Will Employment Doctrine Is Likely To Keep Expanding, Melanie Robin Galberry

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Coches Y Accidentes (Ii): Algunos Problemas Del Seguro De Responsabilidad Civil Del Automóvil, Fernando Gómez

Fernando Gómez Pomar

No abstract provided.

Daño Moral, Fernando Gómez

Fernando Gómez Pomar

No abstract provided.

A Reexamination Of The Distinction Between “Loss-Allocating” And “Conduct-Regulating” Rules, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

The Louisiana choice of law code is an important effort to codify the best of modem conflicts understanding. I routinely teach it to my conflicts students even though few will practice in Louisiana. I think it quite possible that someday states that have followed more ad hoc judicial codifications may consider adopting the more systematic codification found in Louisiana.

The code's choice of law articles on torts incorporate a distinction, first developed in New York, between tort rules that are conduct-regulating and those that are loss-allocating. This rule is built around the premise that there are two fundamental purposes of …

Introduction, Anthony J. Scirica

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On Causation, Mari J. Matsuda

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Essay, Professor Matsuda argues that the narrow dyadic focus of tort law perpetuates very real, and remediable, social harms. Using tort causation doctrine as her starting point, Professor Matsuda demonstrates how the tort system sacrifices human bodies to maintain the smooth flow of the economic system. Time after time, tragedies occur: school systems fail, first graders shoot each other, women live in constant fear of rape. Yet each tragedy is met with the same systematic response: those without resources, those least able to correct the harm, are considered the legal cause of the harm. The economic and corporate …

Prudence, Benevolence, And Negligence: Virtue Ethics And Tort Law, Heidi Li Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Tort law assesses negligence according to the conduct of a reasonable person of ordinary prudence who acts with due care for the safety of others. This standard assigns three traits to the person whose conduct sets the bar for measuring negligence: reasonableness, ordinary prudence, and due care for the safety of others. Yet contemporary tort scholars have almost exclusively examined only one of these attributes, reasonableness, and have wholly neglected to carefully examine the other elements key to the negligence standard: prudence and due care for the safety of others. It is mistaken to reduce negligence to reasonableness or to …

Nuremberg In America: Litigating The Holocaust In United States Courts, Michael Bazyler

Michael Bazyler

A comprehensive analysis of lawsuits filed in U.S. courts arising out of theft of assets from Jews during World War II.

Social Norms And Judicial Rulemaking: Commitment To Political Process And The Basis Of Tort Law, Martin A. Kotler

Martin A. Kotler

This Article looks at the respective roles of judges and juries in common law civil litigation and considers the legitimacy of both in light of our essential commitment to majoritarian politics. It concludes that the legitimacy of judicial rulemaking is highly suspect and can be justified when necessary to protect the political process by policing fraud and under a few other narrow sets of circumstances. Jury decision-making, on the other hand, is by far more defensible representing, as it does, a form of direct participatory democracy.

Thus, although the tort reform debate often focuses on the conflict between legislative bodies …

Responsabilidad Extracontractual Y Otras Fuentes De Reparación De Daños "Collateral Source Rule" Y Afines, Fernando Gómez

Fernando Gómez Pomar

No abstract provided.