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Torts Commons

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2010

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Articles 121 - 126 of 126

Full-Text Articles in Torts

Prosser's Privacy Law: A Mixed Legacy, Neil M. Richards, Daniel J. Solove Jan 2010

Prosser's Privacy Law: A Mixed Legacy, Neil M. Richards, Daniel J. Solove

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines the complex ways in which William Prosser shaped the development of the American law of tort privacy. Although Prosser certainly gave tort privacy an order and legitimacy that it had previously lacked, he also stunted its development in ways that limited its ability to adapt to the problems of the Information Age. His skepticism about privacy, as well as his view that tort privacy lacked conceptual coherence, led him to categorize the law into a set of four narrow categories and strip it of any guiding concept to shape its future development. Prosser’s legacy for tort privacy …


The Puzzle Of Brandeis, Privacy, And Speech, Neil M. Richards Jan 2010

The Puzzle Of Brandeis, Privacy, And Speech, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

Most courts and scholarship assume that privacy and free speech are always in conflict, even though each of these traditions can be traced back to writings by Louis D. Brandeis – his 1890 Harvard Law Review article “The Right to Privacy” and his 1927 concurrence in Whitney v. California. How can modern notions of privacy and speech be so fundamentally opposed if Brandeis played a major role in crafting both? And how, if at all, did Brandeis recognize or address these tensions? These questions have been neglected by scholars of First Amendment law, privacy, and Brandeis. In this paper, I …


The Frequency, Predictability, And Proportionality Of Jury Awards Of Punitive Damages In State Courts In 2005: A New Audit, Neil Vidmar, Mirya Holman Jan 2010

The Frequency, Predictability, And Proportionality Of Jury Awards Of Punitive Damages In State Courts In 2005: A New Audit, Neil Vidmar, Mirya Holman

Faculty Scholarship

The state of punitive damages in the United States has been a controversial topic for more than three decades, resulting in litigation reaching the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts. Various business advocacy groups have sought to drastically curb or eliminate punitive damages while plaintiffs’ lawyers and consumer groups vigorously defend the use of punitive damages. State legislatures have responded with many substantive and procedural reforms over the years. Yet, in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, the United States Supreme Court, while approvingly citing empirical evidence indicating that there are “not mass-produced runaway awards” and that “by most accounts …


Making European Tort Law: The Game And Its Players, Marta Infantino Jan 2010

Making European Tort Law: The Game And Its Players, Marta Infantino

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

In the last several decades, building a common European tort law has become a primary goal for many European institutions and research groups. On the one hand, EU institutions frequently highlight the need to simplify the current diversity in European tort law, and try to achieve this goal by injecting-so far quite incoherent-pieces of legislation into the European legal framework. On the other hand, many research groups aim to enhance the Europanization process through means that are much differentiated one to the other. Some of these groups (e.g., the European Group on Tort Law and the Study Group on a …


Punitive Damages And Class Actions, Francis Mcgovern Jan 2010

Punitive Damages And Class Actions, Francis Mcgovern

Faculty Scholarship

The union of punitive damages and class actions can be aptly described with Samuel Johnson’s famous quotation regarding marriage: “The triumph of hope over experience.” By most conventional wisdom, there is little future for plaintiffs or defendants who desire to resolve punitive damages claims globally using the procedural vehicle of a class action. From a conceptual perspective, however, there are circumstances under which the union could function. This Article explores those possibilities, not in the spirit of normative support, but in the spirit of exploring theories that may have some prospective vitality. Notwithstanding the chilly reception that punitive damages class …


Medical Malpractice Liability Crisis Or Patient Compensation Crisis?, Kathryn Zeiler Jan 2010

Medical Malpractice Liability Crisis Or Patient Compensation Crisis?, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

Tort reform has been a hot topic among those interested in assessing whether and how well the tort system aids injured plaintiffs in achieving civil justice. The debate has been especially heated when it comes to medical malpractice liability. Until recently, rhetoric about the liability system and its relationship to insurance markets and physician supply dominated tort reform debates. While claims made by both proponents and opponents can seem intuitive, they are often unsubstantiated. In recent years, however, academics and others have acquired or created datasets to perform analyses to enhance our understanding of the relationship between the tort system …