Torts Commons^™

Understanding The Plaintiff's Attorney: The Implications Of Economic Theory For Private Enforcement Of Law Through Class And Derivative Actions, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Probably to a unique degree, American law relies upon private litigants to enforce substantive provisions of law that in other legal systems are left largely to the discretion of public enforcement agencies. This system of enforcement through "private attorneys general" is most closely associated with the federal antitrust and securities laws and the common law's derivative action, but similar institutional arrangements have developed recently in the environmental, "mass tort," and employment discrimination fields. The key legal rules that make the private attorney general a reality in American law today, however, are not substantive but procedural – namely, those rules that …

Actual Causation Vs. Probabilistic Linkage: The Bane Of Economic Analysis, Richard W. Wright

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Negligence, Causation And Information, Stephen G. Marks

Faculty Scholarship

This note suggests a model to unify, in a simple information-based framework, the notion of negligence and the various notions of causation. In effect, the model demonstrates that negligence, probabilistic cause and cause-in-fact represent an identical concept applied to different information sets. This note uses the unified framework to develop a simple algorithm for the practical application of the principles of causation in the law of negligence.

Charting The Future Course For Corporate Management Of Health Risks, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Corporations engage in technological activities of benefit to society, but thereby also create new health risks for workers, consumers, and communities. Government regulatory agencies deal with this chronic problem by conducting risk analyses and imposing various duties on private firms. Despite agency efforts and corporate compliance, health risks continue to arise and take their toll. To what extent will private firms voluntarily assume greater responsibility for preventing these health risks? This question is of increasing social importance, because the limitations of regulatory efforts are now obvious, whereas health risks are now being identified at what appears to be an increasing …

A Critique Of The Justifications For Employee Suits In Strict Products Liability Against Third Party Manufacturers, Pierre John Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Enterprise Liability Theory Of Torts, Howard C. Klemme

Publications

No abstract provided.

Theory Of Economic Policy And The Law Of Torts, The, Robert Birmingham

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Theory Of Economic Policy And The Law Of Torts, Robert L. Birmingham

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Slumlordism As A Tort, Joseph L. Sax, Fred J. Hiestand

Michigan Law Review

The war against poverty has been fought with rather more vigor than its initiators contemplated. Thus far, however, the major engagements have taken place in the streets of Watts and Chicago, which is not quite what they had in mind. Some, who think it odd that as we pass more laws we get more lawlessness, will perhaps content themselves by observing that the feeding hand is always bitten. Those less easily satisfied have begun to see the need for adopting some legal solutions as far reaching as the problems they are designed to abate; the following article is addressed to …

Products Liability Based Upon Violation Of Statutory Standards, Joseph H. Ballway Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Regulatory enactments controlling production and distribution can give rise in several different ways to civil liability on behalf of persons injured by non-conforming merchandise. For instance, if a statute codifies existing common-law rules of negligence, its effect is merely to place the weight of legislative authority behind ordinary negligence principles. Since an injured party's recovery under such a provision still depends largely upon his proving in the traditional manner that a defendant failed to exercise due care, this kind of statute merits no further discussion. On the other hand, if particular legislation expressly states that a violator may be subjected …

The Contractual Aspect Of Consumer Protection: Recent Developments In The Law Of Sales Warranties, William C. Pelster

Michigan Law Review

As might have been expected, the courts have not confined their efforts in updating the law of products liability to fostering innovations in that segment dealing with warranties. The struggle to impose strict tort liability upon a manufacturer for harm caused by his defective products has made significant advances and is continuing: However, the citadel has yet to be taken. Indeed, even the California Supreme Court, which may be considered the leading proponent of this strict tort theory, has limited its availability so that only those seeking redress for harm to person or property may invoke the doctrine; thus, a …

Products Liability--Some Observations About Allocation Of Risks, Page Keeton

Michigan Law Review

Virtually all of the activities of mankind involve the use of some product. Consequently, nearly all losses in the nature of physical damage to persons or things, and a great deal of the economic losses flowing from inferior or unfit products, are factually caused by characteristics or conditions of products, or at least occur during the use of products. Therefore, when fault, in the sense in which fault has been used in the Anglo-American law of torts (a usage which frequently results in the imposition of liability without personal fault), is abandoned as a basis for shifting or allocating losses, …

The Economic Treatment Of Automobile Injuries, Alfred F. Conard

Michigan Law Review

The automobile has changed more than Americans' ways of transportation. It has changed their ways of housing, of working and playing, of eating, living, and loving. It has also added to their ways of suffering and dying.

The suffering and dying have called forth two kinds of treatment. The better recognized kind is medical treatment, which staves off death and minimizes pain and disability among the living. The less recognized kind of treatment is economic-the restoration to the injury victim or to his dependents of some part of the economic wellbeing that has been snatched away from them by loss …

Latin-American Land Reform: The Uses Of Confiscation, Kenneth L. Karst

Michigan Law Review

This article examines the legislative techniques for taking land, showing their confiscatory operation. For many lawyers, the analysis would then be easily completed: confiscation is wrongful and must be condemned. Rejecting the implicit absolutism of that conclusion, this article inquires into the justifications that can be pleaded on behalf of selective confiscation as an aid in solving some of Latin America's economic and social ills.

The Extraterritorial Effect Of Foreign Exchange Control Laws, F. David Trickey

Michigan Law Review

Article VIII section 2(b) of the International Monetary Fund Articles of Agreement makes "exchange contracts" which are contrary to approved foreign exchange regulations of members "unenforceable" and provides that member nations may further agree upon measures to enforce each other's foreign exchange laws. The recent New York Court of Appeals decision in Banco do Brasil, S.A. v. A. C. Israel Commodity Co. illustrates the serious shortcomings of IMF provisions for enforcing foreign exchange controls. The case also suggests that general conflict of laws rules can be used to effectuate the policies underlying exchange control laws.

International Control Of The Safety Of Nuclear-Powered Merchant Ships, William H. Berman, Lee M. Hydeman

Michigan Law Review

In recent years we have witnessed the transition of nuclear-powered ships from an imaginative dream to an engineering reality. This vast step from the drawing board to successful operation on the high-seas has taken place in a remarkably short span of time. Nevertheless, in the :flush of enthusiasm over the technological achievement, we must not lose sight of the fact that the promise of nuclear power for the propulsion of ships will not have been fulfilled until nuclear vessels are operating safely and economically over the maritime trade routes of the world. It would be unrealistic to assume that further …

Comparative Negligence And Automobile Liability Insurance, Cornelius J. Peck

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this article is not to re-plow the ground of history, case law, and statutory developments which has been so competently tilled by others. Nor is the purpose to give a detailed consideration of each of the practical matters mentioned above. Instead, the focus of this article is on the relationship between comparative negligence and automobile liability insurance. Insurance rates and accident statistics, rather than rules of law and cases, are the primary materials. Such a consideration of the subject it might be hoped would give a positive and substantiated answer to the frequently debated but never documented …

Rationale Of Valuation Of Foreign Money Obligations, Charles Evan

Michigan Law Review

What then should a creditor of a foreign money obligation collect where there was a delay in payment? When are damages for depreciation of foreign money recoverable? As of what time and in what currency are they to be computed? How is the value of a foreign money obligation to be measured where no damages may be had? The answers to these and other incidental questions require a thorough analysis of certain features peculiar to the law of money.

It is the purpose of this article to clarify these problems, to sum up the primary principles by which they are …

Tort Liability Of Organizations For Intentionally Impairing Economic Relations

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.