Law Commons^™

Liability For Future Harm, Alex Stein, Porat Ariel

Alex Stein

This Article considers the possibility of imposing liability in torts for a wrongfully created risk of future harm. We examine the American and English court decisions pertaining to this issue and consider whether a probability-based compensation for the victim’s expected—albeit not yet materialized—harm is just and efficient. We demonstrate how the virtues of a legal regime that allows a tort victim to recover compensation for her expected harm overshadow its vices. We conclude that a person’s risk of sustaining harm in the future should be actionable whenever the risk is substantial. We further conclude that it should be left to …