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Articles 1 - 30 of 134

Full-Text Articles in Torts

Postcolonial Private Law, Debadatta Bose Aug 2026

Postcolonial Private Law, Debadatta Bose

Brooklyn Law Review

This Article provides the missing normative foundation by linking dynamic due process and rigorous rational basis to deliberative democracy. Rigorous rational basis, in essence, requires that majorities offer what deliberative democracy calls publicly accessible reasons—those capable of engaging fellow citizens across lines of difference—for restrictions on liberties. Courts, from this perspective, legitimately referee inevitable democratic conflicts in our pluralistic society. A Court that helps restore reasoned and productive politics cannot come soon enough.


Infliction Of Precarity: Risk, Vulnerability, And Tort Law, Saad Al-Obaidi Jun 2026

Infliction Of Precarity: Risk, Vulnerability, And Tort Law, Saad Al-Obaidi

Journal of Law and Policy

Imposing a risk of harm on someone should be a tort in certain unjustifiable circumstances, regardless of whether the harms at risk materialize. A doctrinal undercurrent exists that supports this proposal concerning latent or delayed harms as legally cognizable injuries. Even though it is a basic moral principle not to put others at risk of harm without justification, courts deny in principle recovery for risks that lack concomitant externalizations in some familiar form of harm, like physical, pecuniary, or emotional damage to the person. This Article argues that tort law should offer recovery for unjustified risk impositions in circumstances that …


Whose Ai Data Center Line Is It Anyway? Proposing A Regulatory Framework To Provide Redress To Communities Impacted By The Externalities Of Ai, Jane Franks Jun 2026

Whose Ai Data Center Line Is It Anyway? Proposing A Regulatory Framework To Provide Redress To Communities Impacted By The Externalities Of Ai, Jane Franks

Journal of Law and Policy

In some ways, artificial intelligence is not new. Humans have theorized and dreamed about AI in some form or another for thousands of years. However, as AI becomes a reality and both companies and countries alike are racing to establish dominance in the field, AI does not feel too familiar. The increased amounts of power and water required by AI data centers are unprecedented, and the federal and state legislative response to the issues facing the communities surrounding AI data centers—and the country at large—has been fragmented at best, and non-existent at worst. This Note examines the externalities of AI, …


Esg-Based Litigation: A Solution To Social Media Companies’ Immunization From Liability For Human Trafficking On Their Platforms, Grace Dore May 2026

Esg-Based Litigation: A Solution To Social Media Companies’ Immunization From Liability For Human Trafficking On Their Platforms, Grace Dore

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Social media platforms have transformed communication, but they have also become a critical tool for human traffickers, who use them to recruit victims, maintain control, and facilitate illegal activities. Despite this, social media companies have largely avoided legal accountability due to the broad immunity provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”), which courts have interpreted to shield platforms from lawsuits arising from user activity. Congress has sought to address this gap through legislation such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (“TVPA”) and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (“FOSTA”). However, these efforts …


Urbanizing Nuisance, George F. K. Werner Mar 2026

Urbanizing Nuisance, George F. K. Werner

Brooklyn Law Review

If you are a prospective resident of neighborhoods like Brooklyn’s Bushwick or Chicago’s Bronzeville, being close to a hip music venue may sound like a never-ending party—that is, until you discover that the hip music venue is your downstairs neighbor, and the party really never ends. Similarly, newcomers to gentrifying neighborhoods are often drawn by a sense of authenticity and vibrancy. But the sights, sounds, and smells that make neighborhoods “authentic” or “vibrant” may not be a good fit for the lifestyles those newcomers bring with them. In these cases, should a plaintiff be able to successfully sue in nuisance? …


A Quarter Century After The Products Liability Restatement: Reflections, Aaron D. Twerski May 2025

A Quarter Century After The Products Liability Restatement: Reflections, Aaron D. Twerski

Brooklyn Law Review

A quarter century has passed since the adoption by the American Law Institute of the Products Liability Restatement. It is time to reflect on whether it has influenced the courts. At the time of its adoption there was considerable controversy with regard to several sections. Some sections were not controversial. There was little disagreement that a plaintiff may draw a res ipsa like inference of product defect. Nor was there disagreement that if a product was in violation of statute that the product was defective per se. Two sections were highly controversial. The Restatement held that a product could not …


The Opioid Litigation’S Challenge For Tort Theory, Alexander B. Lemann May 2025

The Opioid Litigation’S Challenge For Tort Theory, Alexander B. Lemann

Brooklyn Law Review

Tort litigation related to the opioid crisis has spanned several decades and led to tens of billions of dollars in liability. While several important opioid cases remain pending in various stages of litigation, it is now possible to sketch a basic outline of the results: individual plaintiffs sued opioid manufacturers on a variety of theories, seeking redress for the harms resulting from their addictions. They all lost. Following a pattern established by the tobacco litigation thirty years earlier, public plaintiffs, including city, county, and tribal governments, then filed their own suits, principally on public nuisance theories. These cases were much …


When Poison Is On The Menu: Proposing The Adoption Of Ireland’S Stricter Allergen Regulations In America’S Food Establishments, Katherine Fitzgerald May 2025

When Poison Is On The Menu: Proposing The Adoption Of Ireland’S Stricter Allergen Regulations In America’S Food Establishments, Katherine Fitzgerald

Journal of Law and Policy

In the modern era, a growing number of children and adults have been diagnosed with deadly food allergies. For the approximately 33 million Americans who have at least one food allergy, restaurants, aside from the home, are the most likely place where deadly reactions could occur. In order to adapt to this expanding and sensitive population, the federal government should pass legislation that protects these citizens from suffering a preventable, untimely death. Luckily, the legislators of the European Union, and specifically Ireland, have already put food labeling legislation in place that serves to protect those with food allergies. This Irish …


Unveiling The Underbelly Of Artificial Intelligence: The Inadequacies Of The Legal System With Regard To Victims Of Nonconsensual Sexual Deepfakes, Zilana Lee May 2025

Unveiling The Underbelly Of Artificial Intelligence: The Inadequacies Of The Legal System With Regard To Victims Of Nonconsensual Sexual Deepfakes, Zilana Lee

Journal of Law and Policy

Artificial intelligence-powered deepfake technology has ushered a new era of digital sexual abuse, allowing for the seamless fabrication of explicit images that violate bodily autonomy with alarming realism. With little more than a photograph scraped from social media, individuals can use AI tools to fabricate hyper-realistic nude images and pornographic videos of people without their consent. These nonconsensual sexual deepfakes are rapidly spreading online, often going viral before victims are even aware of their existence. The technology can affect anyone, but women and girls remain disproportionately targeted. Recent incidents involving minors highlight both the reach and severity of this harm. …


Implicit Bias Within The Primary Assumption Of Risk Doctrine, Tracy Catapano-Fox Apr 2025

Implicit Bias Within The Primary Assumption Of Risk Doctrine, Tracy Catapano-Fox

Brooklyn Law Review

This Article addresses the efficacy of the primary assumption of risk doctrine, and the improper extension of the doctrine to vitiate a plaintiff’s ability to obtain recourse in personal injury cases. When the New York legislature enacted the comparative negligence standard in 1975, it essentially revoked the applicability of the primary assumption of risk doctrine as a defense in tort litigation. However, the courts continued to apply the primary assumption of risk doctrine in tort cases involving sports or physical activity, analyzing it as an element of a defendant’s duty and serving as a complete bar to recovery for plaintiffs …


Aerial Highways: The Fifth Amendment Implications Of Commercial Drone Delivery Services, Marc C. Mcallister, Karen A. Sauls Apr 2025

Aerial Highways: The Fifth Amendment Implications Of Commercial Drone Delivery Services, Marc C. Mcallister, Karen A. Sauls

Brooklyn Law Review

Commercial drone delivery systems that deliver packages of purchased products directly to the homes of consumers are being developed and tested by many companies in America, including Walmart and Amazon. Soon enough, our skies will be filled with low-flying drones. This Article joins the growing cohort of legal scholars discussing drones, but focuses on an issue not addressed to this point - how commercial drone delivery systems can undermine and diminish the property rights of private landowners. In the past, most legal scholars have addressed the interplay between drones and private property by examining potential tort liability for drone operators …


A Call For Statutory Reform: Online Marketplaces That Profit From Product Sales Should Be Held Strictly Liable As Sellers, Mark Anderson Dec 2024

A Call For Statutory Reform: Online Marketplaces That Profit From Product Sales Should Be Held Strictly Liable As Sellers, Mark Anderson

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Today, Americans purchase roughly 16% of all consumer goods through online marketplaces such as Amazon. While traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that sell defective products are strictly liable for harm caused by those products, online marketplace retailers, which serve analogous roles in defective product sales, can often evade liability entirely. Amazon, for instance, is immune from liability for product defects in more than 60% of sales conducted on its website in almost every state. This Note explains why online marketplaces that profit from defective product sales should be strictly liable for harm those products cause, and why courts often refuse to hold …


Silent Suffering: Demanding Individual Accountability For Sexual Assault Against Disabled Children In School Environments, Stephanie Flores Dec 2024

Silent Suffering: Demanding Individual Accountability For Sexual Assault Against Disabled Children In School Environments, Stephanie Flores

Journal of Law and Policy

Disabled children are among the most vulnerable in society, particularly in school environments where they depend on the actions and care of others for their safety. These children face significantly higher risks of sexual abuse than their non-disabled peers, and school officials' negligence can exacerbate this danger. Despite the prevalence of such cases, the Fifth Circuit's refusal to recognize school officials’ liability under the state-created danger doctrine, as seen in Fisher v. Moore, deprives disabled children of adequate legal recourse under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The decision holds that school officials cannot be held personally liable for the peer-inflicted sexual …


Johnson & Johnson’S Dance With Bad Faith: A Look At How Large Corporations Utilize The Bankruptcy Code To Avoid Liability From Mass Tort Claims, Amy West Jun 2024

Johnson & Johnson’S Dance With Bad Faith: A Look At How Large Corporations Utilize The Bankruptcy Code To Avoid Liability From Mass Tort Claims, Amy West

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Since Congress enacted the current Bankruptcy Code in 1978, large corporations have strategically used bankruptcy law to evade liability in mass tort claims. This Note examines three case studies illustrating such attempts. The first case involves Johnson & Johnson, which tried to use the so-called “Texas Two-Step” maneuver to circumvent liability for 38,000 pending talc-related lawsuits linked to injuries caused by its well-known Baby Powder. The second case is the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy. Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical manufacturer responsible for creating OxyContin, faces thousands of claims for strict liability, negligence, and failure to warn. The issue here is whether the …


A New Private Law Of Policing, Cristina Carmody Tilley Mar 2024

A New Private Law Of Policing, Cristina Carmody Tilley

Brooklyn Law Review

American law and American life are asymmetrical. Law divides neatly in two: public and private. But life is lived in three distinct spaces: pure public, pure private, and hybrid middle spaces that are neither state nor home. Which body of law governs the shops, gyms, and workplaces that are formally accessible to all, but functionally hostile to Black, female, poor, and other marginalized Americans? From the liberal midcentury onward, social justice advocates have treated these spaces as fundamentally public and fully remediable via public law equity commands. This article takes a broader view. It urges a tort law revival in …


Dogma, Discrimination, And Doctrinal Disarray: A New Test To Define Harm Under Title Vii, Zach Islam Mar 2024

Dogma, Discrimination, And Doctrinal Disarray: A New Test To Define Harm Under Title Vii, Zach Islam

Brooklyn Law Review

Historically, federal courts have used the “adverse employment action” test in Title VII disparate treatment, disparate impact, and retaliation cases to determine whether a plaintiff has suffered adequate harm. This note argues that this approach is fundamentally flawed. At the outset, the test is a judicial power grab with no support in the statutory language. What is more, it fails to uphold the plain policy purposes for Title VII by largely ignoring evidence of discriminatory acts in the workplace that Congress sought to prevent in passing the statute. Consequently, Title VII plaintiffs get the short end of the stick with …


Renewing Products Liability With Semen, Anita Bernstein Jan 2024

Renewing Products Liability With Semen, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Engaging With Professor Twerski In The Choice Of Law Revolution, Robert A. Sedler Dec 2023

Engaging With Professor Twerski In The Choice Of Law Revolution, Robert A. Sedler

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.


Situating Bystanders Within Strict Products Liability, Mark A. Geistfeld Dec 2023

Situating Bystanders Within Strict Products Liability, Mark A. Geistfeld

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

"The largely neglected role of bystanders within products liability is reflected in the extensive scholarship of Professor Aaron Twerski—the rightly celebrated honoree of this symposium. Within Twerski’s vast body of impressive publications, his limited discussions of bystanders align with the widely held assumption that, aside from the problems they pose for the consumer expectations test, bystanders do not merit much attention within the context of products liability. Bystander injuries are much more important than is commonly recognized; one must focus on them to adequately identify the conditions under which consumer-choice doctrines properly limit tort liability. Because the varied rules of …


In The Duty Wars, I'M Switzerland, W. Bradley Wendel Dec 2023

In The Duty Wars, I'M Switzerland, W. Bradley Wendel

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The “duty wars” have been raging among tort scholars for some time, sparked by the Third Restatement’s deflationary approach to the duty element of the negligence cause of action. Defenders of the traditional approach to duty insist that it is necessary to ensure that tort law stays on the right side of the boundary between public and private law insofar as the negligence tort recognizes a relational conception of rights owed among individuals. The worry is that negligence shorn of the duty element becomes an instrument of efficiency or deterrence rather than recognizing obligations. Relatedly, the approach pioneered by the …


Expert Evidence: The Gatekeeper Role Of Justice, Victor E. Schwartz Dec 2023

Expert Evidence: The Gatekeeper Role Of Justice, Victor E. Schwartz

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.


Enterprise, Liability, And Insolvency: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, Edward J. Janger Dec 2023

Enterprise, Liability, And Insolvency: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, Edward J. Janger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Modern tort law links concepts of duty, duty of care, causation, and compensatory damages in a manner that, it is hoped, simultaneously communicates moral suasion, redresses wrongs, and incentivizes “reasonable” socially appropriate behavior. Deterrence and corrective justice differ fiercely about the scope of and rationale for liability, but both assume that tortfeasors are good for their debts (or at least insured). This is not always the case. Sometimes, debtors are insolvent. Bankruptcy law provides individuals with a route to a fresh start, and this paper considers the relationship between modern tort law and the discharge of debt in bankruptcy. The …


Aaron Twerski — Practical Wisdom At Ground Zero, Anthony J. Sebok Dec 2023

Aaron Twerski — Practical Wisdom At Ground Zero, Anthony J. Sebok

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article celebrates Professor. Aaron Twerski’s “practical wisdom” in crafting a solution (with Jim Henderson) to a problem faced by Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the so-called 9/11 First Responder cases. The problem was that Congress did not include these plaintiffs within the Victims Compensation Fund (“VCF”) despite there being every reason to suspect that the interaction of workersman’s compensation law and tort law, if left to operate on their own, would generate a politically unacceptable outcome. Despite his clear misgivings – —expressed decades earlier – —about allowing those who control the workplace to enjoy the benefits of limited liability guaranteed …


The Constitutional Claim To Individuation In Tort — A Tale Of Two Centuries, Part 2, Douglas A. Kysar Dec 2023

The Constitutional Claim To Individuation In Tort — A Tale Of Two Centuries, Part 2, Douglas A. Kysar

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article—drafted to honor Professor Aaron Twerski on the occasion of his festschrift at Brooklyn Law School—draws inspiration from his classic 1989 article on market share liability. In that article, Professor Twerski observed that doctrinal confusions in market share liability arose from judges who “had their feet firmly planted in two different centuries—one foot in the nineteenth century and the other in the twenty-first century.” This Article takes inspiration from Twerski’s “two centuries” metaphor to examine the rise of constitutional objections by defendants to certain doctrinal innovations that attempt to adapt tort law to modern ways of causing, identifying, and …


Getting The Law Right: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, John C. P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky Dec 2023

Getting The Law Right: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, John C. P. Goldberg, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Written in honor of the great torts scholar Aaron Twerski, this article critically analyzes disturbing developments in New York negligence law as it applies to police who injure innocent bystanders. With the New York Court of Appeals’ 2022 decision in Ferreira v. City of Binghamton as a focal point, it argues that Ferreira and other contemporary decisions have largely betrayed the promise of the 1929 Court of Claims Act, which waived state and municipal immunity for police torts. While courts may be warranted in recognizing certain limits on police negligence liability that do not apply to private actors, the current …


Professor Aaron Twerski: Special Master In The 9/11 Responders' Litigation, Stephan Landsman Dec 2023

Professor Aaron Twerski: Special Master In The 9/11 Responders' Litigation, Stephan Landsman

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.


Not All Product-Caused Harm Is "Products Liability", Michael D. Green Dec 2023

Not All Product-Caused Harm Is "Products Liability", Michael D. Green

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

"Since two important federal preemption decisions by the United States Supreme Court, those injured by warnings defects in the drugs they take may sue the manufacturer only if the patient took a brand-name drug. Those who took the generic version of the drug, which comprise approximately 90 percent of all prescriptions, cannot sue the drug manufacturer regardless of how inadequate its labeling is in explaining the risks of consuming the drug. Clever plaintiffs’ lawyers began bringing suits on behalf of their generic-drug-consuming clients against brand-name manufacturers that, under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, control the labeling both on their …


An Ally Can Connect Tort Theory To International And Comparative Law, Anita Bernstein Oct 2023

An Ally Can Connect Tort Theory To International And Comparative Law, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Enterprise, Liability, And Insolvency: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, Edward Janger Oct 2023

Enterprise, Liability, And Insolvency: An Essay In Honor Of Aaron Twerski, Edward Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Clicking Away Consent: Establishing Accountability And Liability Apportionment In Direct-To-Consumer Healthcare Artificial Intelligence, Stephanie L. Lee May 2023

Clicking Away Consent: Establishing Accountability And Liability Apportionment In Direct-To-Consumer Healthcare Artificial Intelligence, Stephanie L. Lee

Brooklyn Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are making sweeping changes across all industries, and health care is no exception. AI promises to revolutionize patient treatment with the development of algorithm-driven tools to improve efficiency in clinical care. As alluring as machine-driven learning may be given its potentialities, however, the incorporation of AI into the healthcare field has also been received with trepidation. This fear is understandable given the lack of transparency to the public surrounding the exact mechanisms for creating algorithms and the reasoning followed by the software. Indeed, AI in the healthcare system is aptly known as “black-box medicine.” …