Law Commons^™

Close, But No Cigar: Issues With Louisiana Revised Statutes § 9:2800.27 And The Collateral Source Rule, Andrew G. Jarreau

Louisiana Law Review

The article discusses issues on the collateral source rule in Louisiana, the ruling by the state Supreme Court in the case Bozeman v. State, and why the state's Revised Statutes  9:2800.27 contradicts the policy behind tort recovery.

Illuminating False Light: Assessing The Case For The False Light Tort In Canada, Fraser Duncan

Dalhousie Law Journal

The false light tort has been the most contentious of the four privacy torts recognized in many US states, receiving criticism for its uncertain connection to privacy interests, its overlap with defamation and its chilling effect on free speech. While the tort has not previously received much judicial or scholarly attention in Canada, the recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Yenovkian v Gulian recognized false light as a cause of action in the province. This article cautions other Canadian common law courts against following suit through an analysis of the nature, history, and criticisms of the …

Sylvanna Gross ’23: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Sylvanna Gross

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Seeking (Some) Climate Justice In State Tort Law, Karen C. Sokol

Washington Law Review

Over the last decade, an increasing number of path-breaking cases have been filed throughout the world, seeking to hold fossil fuel industry companies and governments accountable for their actions and inactions that have contributed to the climate crisis. This Article focuses on an important subset of those cases—namely, the recent surge of cases brought by states, cities, and counties all over the United States alleging that the largest fossil fuel industry actors, including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron, are liable in state tort law for harms caused by climate change.

The Article begins with a synthesis of the history of …

The First Amendment And The Right(S) Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman, Robert C. Post

All Faculty Scholarship

The right of publicity protects persons against unauthorized uses of their identity, most typically their names, images, or voices. The right is in obvious tension with freedom of speech. Yet courts seeking to reconcile the right with the First Amendment have to date produced only a notoriously confused muddle of inconsistent constitutional doctrine. In this Article, we suggest a way out of the maze. We propose a relatively straightforward framework for analyzing how the right of publicity should be squared with First Amendment principles.

At the root of contemporary constitutional confusion lies a failure to articulate the precise state interests …

Consortium And Workers’ Compensation: The Demolition Of Consortium, Michael Green, David M. Layman

Louisiana Law Review

The article discusses issues on spousal consortium claims and workers' compensation in the U.S., including the aspects of compensation for accidental injuries and tort claims.

New Concern For Transnational Corporations: Potential Liability For Tortious Acts Committed By Foreign Partners

San Diego Law Review

This Comment addresses these broad issues in three parts. First, it discusses past initiatives by various governing bodies and private groups to handle the problem of TNCs investing in countries that commit grave human rights violations. 14 More specifically, the efforts discussed are those of the United Nations, the U.S. Congress and the President, state and city governments, and private groups. 5 Because of the U.S. government's desire to promote free trade, none of these efforts has proved effective in regulating investment activity overseas.

Crisis At The Pregnancy Center: Regulating Pseudo-Clinics And Reclaiming Informed Consent, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) adopt the look of medical practices — complete with workers in scrubs, ultrasound machines, and invasive physical exams — to deceive pregnant women into thinking they are being treated by licensed medical professionals. In reality, CPCs offer exclusively Bible-based, non-objective counseling. Numerous attempts to regulate CPCs have faced political roadblocks. Most recently, in NIFLA v. Becerra, the Supreme Court held that state efforts to require CPCs to disclose that they are not medically licensed are unconstitutional violations of CPCs’ First Amendment right to free speech. In the wake of that decision, pregnant women in crisis — …

Candidate Privacy, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

In the United States, we have long accepted that candidates for public office who have voluntarily stepped into the public eye sacrifice claims to privacy. This refrain is rooted deep within the American enterprise, emanating from the Framers' concept of the informed citizen as a bedrock of democracy. Voters must have full information about candidates to make their choices at the ballot box. Even as privacy rights for ordinary citizens have expanded, privacy theorists and courts continue to exempt candidates from privacy protections. This Article suggests that two disruptions warrant revisiting the privacy interests of candidates. The first is a …

Knowing How To Know: Secondary Liability For Speech In Copyright Law, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

Contributory copyright infringement has long been based on whether the defendant, "with knowledge of the infringing activity," induced, caused, or materially contributed to another's infringing conduct. But few court opinions or scholarly articles have given due consideration to what it means to "know" of someone else's infringing conduct, particularly when the unlawfulness at issue cannot truly exist until a legal judgment occurs. How can one "know," in other words, that a court or jury will deem a particular use infringement rather than de minimis or fair use? At best, contributory defendants engage in a predictive exercise--in some cases, a more …

#Livingwhileblack: Blackness As Nuisance, Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Taja-Nia Y. Henderson

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Guns In The Private Square, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

The regulation of guns has been one of the most hotly debated public policy issues in the United States throughout the country’s history. But, up until recently, it has always been just that — a debate about public policy. Two recent developments have changed the landscape and moved the debate about publicly carrying firearms from the realm of public policy, to the realm of private decision-making and private law. First, laws related to publicly carrying firearms have been dramatically loosened throughout the United States to the point that, in the vast majority of states, anyone who is legally allowed to …

Torts: Just Walk Away: How An Overbroad Foreseeability Of Harm Standard Could Kill “Curbside Consultations” — Warren V. Dinter, 926 N.W.2d 370 (Minn. 2019), Erika Miller

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Tort Law The Tool For Fixing Reproductive Wrongs?, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

In his 2019 book, Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology are Remaking Reproduction and the Law, Dov Fox offers a compelling argument for new torts allowing recovery for wrongful reproduction. These torts would include three sorts of cases, those where wrongdoing (whether negligent, reckless, or intentional) caused undesired reproduction; stymied desired reproduction; or confounded reproduction, causing birth of a child different than that intended by the parents. The likely defendants in these torts are gynecologists, urologists, sperm banks, and IVF clinics.

Cyber Mobs, Disinformation, And Death Videos: The Internet As It Is (And As It Should Be), Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Fiction and visual representations can alter our understanding of human experiences and struggles. They help us understand human frailties and suffering in a visceral way. Nick Drnaso’s graphic novel Sabrina does that in spades. In Sabrina, a woman is murdered by a misogynist, and a video of her execution is leaked. Conspiracy theorists deem her murder a hoax. A cyber mob smears the woman’s loved ones as crisis actors, posts death threats, and spreads their personal information. The attacks continue until a shooting massacre redirects the cyber mob’s wrath to other mourners. Sabrina captures the breathtaking velocity of disinformation online …

Accountability, Eugenics, And Reproductive Justice, Susan Frelich Appleton

Scholarship@WashULaw

This analysis contributes to an online symposium on Dov Fox’s book BIRTH RIGHTS AND WRONGS: HOW MEDICINE AND TECHNOLOGY ARE CHANGING REPRODUCTION AND THE LAW. Using eugenics and reproductive justice as points of departure, this review highlights both strengths and weaknesses in Fox’s approach.

Judicial Adjuncts In Multidistrict Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Margaret S. Williams

Scholarly Works

Peeking under the tent of our nation's largest and often most impactful cases reveals that judges often act like ringmasters: They delegate their authority to a wide array of magistrate judges, special masters, and settlement administrators. Some, like the American Bar Association, see this as a plus that promotes efficiency and cost savings. Critics, however, contend that delegating judicial power especially to private citizens, removes adjudication from public scrutiny, injects thorny ethical questions about ex parte communications, and risks cronyism and high costs. By constructing an original dataset of ninety-two multidistrict products liability proceedings centralized over fourteen years, we introduce …

Science Or Status Quo? Disregard For A Defendant's Mental Illness In Tort Suits, Gabrielle Lindquist

Washington Law Review Online

Mental illness is almost never considered when courts determine whether a defendant is liable for a tort. Nearly every United States jurisdiction—Washington state included—declines to offer a modified “reasonable person” standard for negligent tort defendants with mental illnesses or any form of mental illness-based affirmative defense for intentional tort defendants. There is much debate about whether tort law should evolve to accommodate defendants with mental illnesses. This Comment seeks to dive deeper into why that debate persists.

Although there are numerous justifications for this current state of tort law, the most common rationalizations given are twofold. First, that the primary …

2019-2020 Annual Report: Roger Williams University School Of Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

A Recent Renaissance In Privacy Law, Margot Kaminski

Publications

Considering the recent increased attention to privacy law issues amid the typically slow pace of legal change.

Troll Storms And Tort Liability For Speech Urging Action By Others: A First Amendment Analysis And An Initial Step Toward A Federal Rule, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Commentary examines when, consistent with First Amendment principles of free expression, speakers can be held tortiously responsible for the actions of others with whom they have no contractual or employer-employee relationship. It argues that recent lawsuits against Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin for sparking “troll storms” provide a timely analytical springboard into the issue of vicarious tort liability. Furthermore, such liability is particularly problematic when a speaker’s message urging action does not fall into an unprotected category of expression, such as incitement or true threats, and thus, were it not for tort law, would be fully protected. In examining …