Contracts Commons^™

Choosing Medical Malpractice, Nadia N. Sawicki

Nadia N. Sawicki

Modern principles of patient autonomy and health care consumerism are at odds with medical malpractice law's traditional skepticism towards the defenses of contractual waiver and assumption of risk. Many American courts follow a patient-protective view, exemplified by the reasoning in the seminal Tunkl case, rejecting any attempts by physicians to relieve themselves of liability on the grounds of a patient's agreement to assume the risk of malpractice. However, where patients pursue unconventional treatments that satisfy their personal preferences but that arguably fall outside the standard of care, courts have good reason to be more receptive to such defenses. This Article …

Modernizing Informed Consent: Expanding The Boundaries Of Materiality, Nadia N. Sawicki

Nadia N. Sawicki

Informed consent law’s emphasis on the disclosure of purely medical information – such as diagnosis, prognosis, and the risks and benefits of various treatment alternatives – does not accurately reflect modern understandings of how patients make medical decisions. Existing common law disclosure duties fail to capture a variety of non-medical factors relevant to patients, including information about the physician’s personal characteristics; the cost of treatment; the social implications of various health care interventions; and the legal consequences associated with diagnosis and treatment. Although there is a wealth of literature analyzing the merits of such disclosures in a few narrow contexts, …

English Justice For An American Company?, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

Insuring Against Cyber Risk: The Evolution Of An Industry (Introduction), Christopher French

Christopher C. French

Understanding Insurance Policies As Noncontracts: An Alternative Approach To Drafting And Construing These Unique Financial Instruments, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

Insurance Policies: The Grandparents Of Contractual Black Holes, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

Private Law In The Gaps, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Private law subjects like tort, contract, and property are traditionally taken to be at the core of the common law tradition, yet statutes increasingly intersect with these bodies of doctrine. This Article draws on recent work in private law theory and statutory interpretation to consider afresh what courts should do with private law in statutory gaps. In particular, it focuses on statutes touching on tort law, a field at the leading edge of private law theory. This Article's analysis unsettles some conventional wisdom about the intersection of private law and statutes. Many leading tort scholars and jurists embrace a regulatory …

Celebrity Newsgathering And Privacy: The Transformation Of Breach Of Confidence In English Law, John D. Mccamus

John D. McCamus

In recent years, a series of leading cases have returned to consider these questions. The implications of these decisions for the current shape of English law relating to civil redress for privacy invasion are the subject of this article. Surprisingly, perhaps, English courts have remained steadfast in their refusal to recognize invasion of privacy as a tort and in doing so have quite explicitly declined to rely on American experience in this area. Rather, English courts have preferred to resist innovation of this kind and leave the difficult question of privacy law reform to Parliament. On a number of recent …

Sex, Videos, And Insurance: How Gawker Could Have Avoided Financial Responsibility For The $140 Million Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Verdict, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

The God Paradox, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Not available.

A Battlefield Map For Nfl V. Insurance Industry Re: Concussion Liabilities, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

Revisiting Construction Defects As “Occurrences” Under Cgl Insurance Policies, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

The Corporate Conspiracy Vacuum (Formerly "Corporate Conspiracy: How Not Calling A Conspiracy A Conspiracy Is Warping The Law On Corporate Wrongdoing"), J.S. Nelson

J.S. Nelson

Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …

The Tort Foundation Of Duty Of Care And Business Judgment, Robert Rhee

Robert Rhee

This Article corrects a misconception in corporation law – the belief that principles of tort law do not apply to the liability scheme of fiduciary duty. A board’s duty of care implies exposure to liability, but the business judgment rule precludes it. Tort law finds fault; corporation law excuses it. The conventional wisdom says that the tort analogy fails. This dismissal of tort prinicples is wrong. Although shareholder derivative suits and ordinary tort cases properly yield systemically antipodal outcomes, they are bound by a common analytical framework. The principles of board liability are rooted in tort doctrines governing duty, customs, …

Tortious Interference And The Law Of Contract: The Case For Specific Performance Revisited, Deepa Varadarajan

Deepa Varadarajan

What is the role of contract law in remedying breach? The question of the appropriate legal remedy, specific performance versus money damages, has provided adequate fodder for three decades of debate in the law and economics discourse. In the legal discipline at large, the topic has spurred centuries of debate, as illustrated by Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous line: “The only universal consequence of a legally binding promise is, that the law makes the promisor pay damages if the promised event does not come to pass.” Holmes's approach to contractual remedy would evolve during the latter half of the twentieth century …

Nonmaterial Misrepresentation: Damages, Rescission, And The Possibility Of Efficient Fraud, Emily Sherwin

Emily L Sherwin

Buried in the details of legal doctrine governing misrepresentation is a remedial anomaly that raises some interesting questions about how law should deal with moral wrongs such as fraud. We tend to think of deliberate deception--fraud--as a grave moral wrong. At least, we think of deception as gravely wrong when the deceiver's objective is not to avert harm or spare feelings, but to obtain someone's money or goods. Deception denies the autonomy of the person deceived and undermines the foundation of trust in human interaction. The law, however, does not penalize every instance of fraud. Moreover, the standards governing when …

Duty In The Litigation-Investment Agreement: The Choice Between Tort And Contract Norms When The Deal Breaks Down, Anthony J. Sebok, W. Bradley Wendel

W. Bradley Wendel

Litigation investment, which is also known as “litigation finance” or “third party litigation finance,” has grown in importance in many common law and civilian legal systems and has come to the United States as well. While many questions remain about both legality and social desirability of litigation finance, this paper starts with the assumption that the practice will become widespread in the US and explores the obligations of the parties to the litigation finance contract. The first part of the article uses an example to illustrate the risks imposed by one of the other party on the other which should …

The Transformation Of South African Private Law After Twenty Years Of Democracy, 14 Nw. J. Int’L Hum. Rts. (Forthcoming 2016)., Christopher J. Roederer

Christopher J. Roederer

In The Transformation of South African Private Law after Ten Years of Democracy, 37 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 447 (2006), I evaluated the role of private law in consolidating South Africa’s constitutional democracy. There, I traced the negative effects of apartheid from public law to private law, and then to the law of delict, South Africa’s counterpart to tort law. I demonstrated that the law of delict failed to develop under apartheid and that the values animating the law of delict under apartheid were inconsistent with the values and aspirations of South Africa’s democratic transformation. By the end of …

Bubbles (Or, Some Reflections On The Basic Laws Of Human Relations), Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

The Role Of The Profit Imperative In Risk Management, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

Las Relaciones Contractuales De Hecho Y El Contacto Social: ¿Instituciones Incomprendidas?, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

No abstract provided.

Los Tormentos De La Teoría Del Contacto Social: Contextualizando (Otra Vez) Una Categoría Jurídica, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

No abstract provided.

Promises To Keep? Coaches Tubby Smith, Jimmy Williams And Lessons Learned In 2012, Adam Epstein, Henry Lowenstein

Adam Epstein

The primary purpose of this article is to explore the 2012 legal decision that stemmed from an employment-related fiasco in 2007 when Coach Orlando Henry “Tubby” Smith first formed his staff at UM and asked coach Jimmy Williams from Oklahoma State University to join him as an assistant coach. Smith’s offer, however, proved not to be a legally binding offer, at least according to the Minnesota Supreme Court, because Smith apparently did not have the authority to make the offer in the first place. In fact, Jimmy Williams was declared by the Minnesota Supreme Court majority to have been sophisticated …

¿Si Te Toco, Te Pago? Lo Dices ¿En Serio?: Contextualizando La Teoría Del Contacto Social, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

No abstract provided.

The Property Platform In Anglo-American Law And The Primacy Of The Property Concept, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article proposes that the property concept, when reduced to its basic principles, is a foundational element and a useful lens for evaluating and understanding the whole of Anglo-American private law even though the discrete disciplines—property, tort, and contract—have their own separate and distinct existence. In this Article, a broad property concept is not focused just on things or on sticks related to things but instead is defined as relating to all things owned. These things may include one’s self and all the key elements associated with this broader set of things owned—including the right to exclude, ownership, dominion, authority, …

Contractual Limitation Of Liability By The So-Called "Massachusetts Trust," Under The Indiana Law, Robert C. Brown

Dr Robert Brown

No abstract provided.

El Homo Economicus Y La Libertad De Contratación, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Se compartió la mesa con el profesor Juan José Martínez, en la presentación se debatió acerco del rol que cumple el presupuesto de racionalidad en el modelo standard del análisis económico del Derecho y las acotaciones del Behavioral Law and Economics.

Si Algo Puede Salir Mal... Saldrá Mal (Y En El Peor Momento Posible): Una Rápida Revisión Ius-Económica A La Imposibilidad Contractual, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

En la presente nota se desea subrayar algunas características económicas y jurídicas de figuras que sirven como justificación para el incumplimiento contractual, tales como la imposibilidad y la excesiva onerosidad.

¿Sabías Que La Gente Sigue Diciendo Que Tú Y Yo Estamos Locos?, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

En la presente nota se desea subrayar cómo el sector más extremo del Law and Economics tradicional tiende a minusvalorar los descubrimiento del Behavioral Law and Economics para lo cual se sugieren algunas explicaciones que podrían explicar este tipo de reacción, además de ser un síntoma de “esquizofrenia económica”.