Torts Commons^™

Willfulness Versus Expectation: A Promisor-Based Defense Of Willful Breach Doctrine, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman

Michigan Law Review

Willful breach doctrine should be a major embarrassment to contract law. If the default remedy for breach is expectation damages designed to put the injured promisee in the position she would have been in if the contract had been performed, then the promisor's behavior-the reason for the breach-looks to be irrelevant in assessing damages. And yet the cases are full of references to "willful" breaches, which seem often to be treated more harshly than ordinary ones based on the promisor's bad/willful conduct. Our explanation is that willful breaches are best understood as those that should be prevented or deterred because …

A Comparative Fault Defense In Contract Law, Ariel Porat

Michigan Law Review

This Article calls for the recognition of a comparative fault defense in contract law. Part I sets the framework for this defense and suggests the situations in which it should apply. These situations are sorted under two headings: cases of noncooperation and cases of overreliance. Part II unfolds the main argument for recognizing the defense and recommends applying the defense only in cases where cooperation or avoidance of overreliance is low cost.

Stepping Beyond The Smith Plaintiffs‘ Reliance On Corso: An Alternative Approach To Recovering Emotional-Distress Damages In Wrongful-Birth Cases In New Hampshire, Parker B. Potter Jr.

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “More than twenty years ago, in Smith v. Cote, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held “that New Hampshire recognizes a cause of action for wrongful birth.” After so holding, the court then discussed the damages available to a prevailing wrongful-birth plaintiff. Among other things, the court held that when parental emotional distress associated with raising a disabled child, born after the mother had received negligent pre-natal assurance of the baby‘s normal health, “results in tangible pecuniary losses, such as medical expenses or counseling fees, such losses are recoverable.” The court further held that a wrongful-birth plaintiff may not recover …

Foreword: Fault In American Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, Ariel Porat

Michigan Law Review

The basic rule of liability in tort law is fault. The basic rule of liability in contract law is no fault. This is perhaps one of the most striking divides within private law, the most important difference between the law of voluntary and nonvoluntary obligations. It is this fault line (speaking equivocally) that the present Symposium explores. Is it a real divide-two opposite branches of liability within private law-or is it merely a rhetorical myth? How can it be justified? As law-and-economics scholars, this fault/no-fault divide between contract and tort is all the more puzzling. In law and economics, legal …

Stipulated Damages, Super-Strict Liability, And Mitigation In Contract Law, Saul Levmore

Michigan Law Review

The remedy of expectancy damages in contract law is conventionally described as strict liability for breach. Parties sometimes stipulate damages in advance, and may agree that the damages they stipulate shall be the exclusive remedy for breach. They may do so because of their conviction that they can, even in advance, assess damages with greater accuracy than courts, and they may be wary of litigation costs associated with the postbreach determination of expectancy damages. This Article advances two claims. First, that the familiar expectation remedy is correctly understood to involve elements of fault. There is litigation over the question of …

The Role Of Fault In Contract Law: Unconscionability, Unexpected Circumstances, Interpretation, Mistake, And Nonperformance, Melvin Aron Eisenberg

Michigan Law Review

It is often asserted that contract law is based on strict liability, not fault. This assertion is incorrect. Fault is a basic building block of contract law, and pervades the field. Some areas of contract law, such as unconscionability, are largely fault based. Other areas, such as interpretation, include sectors that are fault based in significant part. Still other areas, such as liability for nonperformance, superficially appear to rest on strict liability, but actually rest in significant part on the fault of breaking a promise without sufficient excuse. Contract law discriminates between two types of fault: the violation of strong …

Fault At The Contract-Tort Interface, Roy Kreitner

Michigan Law Review

The formative period in the history of contract and tort (in the second half of the nineteenth century) may be characterized by the cleavage of contract and tort around the concept of fault: tort modernized by moving from strict liability to a regime of "no liability without fault," while contract moved toward strict liability. The opposing attitudes toward fault are puzzling at first glance. Nineteenth-century scholars of private law offered explanations for the opposition, reasoning that alternative ideas about fault account for the different character of state involvement in enforcing private law rights: tort law governs liabilities imposed by law …

Why Breach Of Contract May Not Be Immoral Given The Incompleteness Of Contracts, Steven Shavell

Michigan Law Review

There is a widely held view that breach of contract is immoral. I suggest here that breach may often be seen as moral, once one appreciates that contracts are incompletely detailed agreements and that breach may be committed in problematic contingencies that were not explicitly addressed by the governing contracts. In other words, it is a mistake generally to treat a breach as a violation of a promise that was intended to cover the particular contingency that eventuated.

The Fault Principle As The Chameleon Of Contract Law: A Market Function Approach, Stefan Grundmann

Michigan Law Review

This Article begins with a comparative law survey showing that all legal systems do not opt exclusively for fault liability or strict liability in contract law, but often adopt a more nuanced approach. This approach includes intermediate solutions such as reversing the burden of proof, using a market ("objective") standard of care, distinguishing between different types of contracts, and providing a "second chance" to breaching parties. Taking this starting point seriously and arguing that it is highly unlikely that all legal systems err, this Article argues that the core question is how and when each liability regime should prevail or …

Medical Device Safety Act Of 2009: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Health Of The H. Comm. On Energy And Commerce, 111th Cong., May 12, 2009 (Statement Of David C. Vladeck, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), David C. Vladeck

Testimony Before Congress

I start with a brief history of the Medical Device Amendments of 1976 and explain why that history demonstrates that Congress quite clearly intended to preserve state liability law, not wipe it away. I will then turn to the Court's ruling in Riegel and address why the Court's wooden, textual approach to the Amendments -- which ignores their purpose -- led the Court to conclude, wrongly, that Congress intended the Amendments to preempt state liability claims for devices approved by FDA under the pre-market approval process. Next, I discuss the impact Riegel has had in the courts, resulting in the …

Wyeth V. Levine And Its Implications, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Wyeth v. Levine sharply limited the availability of implied preemption as a defense in pharmaceutical cases. In this Analysis & Perspective, attorney Brian Wolfman discusses the decision and its implications for prescription drug litigation as well as litigation in other areas that are regulated by the federal government.

After Wyeth, Wolfman says, a defendant in a prescription drug case must demonstrate a ‘‘tight fit between the labeling change proposed by the manufacturer (and rejected by the FDA) and the labeling change that the plaintiff contends would have prevented her injuries.’’ Moreover, he says, …

Federalization Snowballs: The Need For National Action In Medical Malpractice Reform, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Because tort law and healthcare regulation are traditional state functions and because medical, legal, and insurance practices are localized, legal scholars have long believed that medical malpractice falls within the states' exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty. This conventional view fails to consider the impact that federal healthcare programs have on the states' incentives to regulate. As a result of federal financing, each state externalizes some of the costs of its malpractice policy onto the federal government. The federal government therefore needs to take charge of medical malpractice in order to fix the spillover problem created by existing federal healthcare programs.

Importantly, …

The Tail Wagging The Dog: Local Summary Judgment Rules That Deem Facts Admitted, Nathaniel S. Boyer

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Order Out Of Chaos: Products Liability Design-Defect Law, Dominick Vetri

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

"One Of The Dirty Secrets Of American Corrections": Retaliation, Surplus Power, And Whistleblowing Inmates, James E. Robertson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Retaliation is deeply engrained in the correctional office subculture; it may well be in the normative response when an inmate files a grievance, a statutory precondition for filing a civil rights action. This Article, the first to address comprehensively the sociological and constitutional aspects of retaliation, argues for protecting grievants through safeguards much like those accorded whistleblowers. Part I of the Article provides a socio-legal primer on correctional officer retaliation by addressing the frequency of retaliation, its causes, and its constitutional taxonomy. Part II describes the elements of a prima facie case of unconstitutional retaliation under § 1983. Part III …

The Tort Of Betrayal Of Trust, Caroline Forell, Anna Sortun

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Fiduciary betrayal is a serious harm. When the fiduciary is a doctor or a lawyer, and the entrustor is a patient or client, this harm frequently goes unremedied. Betrayals arise out of disloyalty and conflicts of interest where the lawyer or doctor puts his or her interest above that of his or her client or patient. They cause dignitary harm that is different from the harm flowing from negligent malpractice. Nevertheless, courts, concerned with overdeterrence, have for the most part refused to allow a separate claim for betrayal. In this Article, we suggest that betrayal deserves a remedy and propose …

Low Probability/High Consequence Events: Dilemmas Of Damage Compensation, Richard O. Lempert

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This article was prepared for a Clifford Symposium which challenged paper writers to imagine how our system of tort compensation might look in the year 2020. This paper responds to an aspect of the general challenge: to imagine a tort recovery system which would deal adequately with rare and catastrophic events. To get a handle on this problem, the paper looks closely at how the legal system compensated damages attendant on four recent events that might be considered “rare and catastrophic” – Three Mile Island, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In no case did the system …

Intelligent Design And Tort Law: Partners In A Unified Theory Of Causation, Barbara Mouly

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Liability: How To Stay Out Of Court, Stephanie Keene, Emily Dillard, Kyanna Coffee, Jeremy Jenkins

Parameters of Law in Student Affairs and Higher Education (CNS 670)

Liability can be defined as being held legally responsible for an incident that may occur. As student affairs professionals, one must be very cautious as to stay out of court. Every word or action a student affairs professional does may be scrutinized and twisted to make them or their given university legally responsible for any adverse incidents that they may have had some involvement with. Incidents which student affairs professionals may be held responsible for can range anywhere from student deaths to expulsion/removal from school and much more. This handbook is designed to better educate you about liability and how …

West Virginia As A Judicial Hellhole: Why Businesses Fear Litigating In State Courts, Victor E. Schwartz, Sherman Joyce, Cary Silverman

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Design Defect Ghosts, David Owen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Boundary-Line Fuction Of The Economic Loss Rule, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Failing To Speak For Itself: The Res Ipsa Loquitur Presumption Of Parental Culpability And Its Greater Consequences, Allyson B. Levine

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tort Experiments In The Laboratories Of Democracy, Alexandra B. Klass

William & Mary Law Review

This Article considers the broad range of "tort experiments" states have undertaken in recent years, as well as the changing attitudes of Congress and the Supreme Court toward state tort law. Notably, while states have limited tort rights and remedies in the products liability and personal injury areas in recent years, they have at the same time increased tort rights and remedies to address new societal problems associated with privacy, publicity, consumer protection, and environmental harm. At the same time, however, Congress has eliminated state tort law entirely in targeted areas without replacing it with corresponding federal remedies. The Supreme …

Manufacturers' Liability For Defective Product Designs: The Triumph Of Risk-Utility, Aaron D. Twerski, James A. Henderson, Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Manufacturer's Liability For Defective Product Designs: The Triumph Of Risk-Utility, Aaron Twerski, James A. Henderson Jr.

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Questioning The Political Question Doctrine: Inconsistent Applications In Reparations And Alien Tort Claims Act Litigation, Shelley Buchanan

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The note argues that while transnational public law litigants have successfully used U.S. courts to address human rights violations under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), African American reparations claims for slavery have been systematically dismissed on procedural grounds, particularly under the political question doctrine. This disparity highlights the inconsistent application of the doctrine, with recent ATCA cases narrowing its scope, while African American slave redress cases continue to face strict dismissal. The note advocates for a more consistent application of the political question doctrine across all human rights litigation, including slave redress, to ensure fairness and maintain the U.S. …

Pamesa Ceramica V. Yisrael Mendelson Ltd, Elyakim Rubinstein, Asher Grunis, Eliezer Rivlin

Translated Opinions

Facts: Pamesa Ceramica (‘Pamesa’), a Spanish company, manufactured floor tiles that were imported into Israel by companies later acquired by Yisrael Mendelson Engineering Technical Supply Ltd (‘Mendelson’). These were subsequently bought by a construction company, Yaakov and Tovi Eisenberger Building and Public Works Co. Ltd (‘Eisenberger’), and used in the construction of a residential building in Kiryat Motzkin.

After the buildings became inhabited, a defect was found in the tiles. Eisenberger replaced the tiles and sued Mendelson for reimbursement of the price of the tiles and the work involved in replacing them, and for compensation for damage to its reputation …

The Effects Of Tort Reform On Medical Malpractice Insurers’ Ultimate Losses, W. Kip Viscusi, Patricia Born, Tom Baker

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Whereas the literature evaluating the effect of tort reforms has focused on the impact of reforms on insurers' reported incurred losses, this article examines the ultimate effects of reforms using the developed losses from a comprehensive sample of insurers writing medical malpractice insurance from 1984 to 2003. Noneconomic damages caps are particularly influential in reducing medical malpractice losses and increasing insurer profitability. The long-run effects of these reforms are greater than insurers' expected effects; for example, 5- and 7-year developed loss ratios are below the initially reported incurred loss ratios for those years following the enactment of noneconomic damages caps. …

Summary Of Stalk V. Mushkin, 125 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 3, Jennifer K. Koonce

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Appeal from a district order granting summary judgment for intentional interference with prospective business advantage, intentional interference with contractual relations, and breach of fiduciary duty.