Torts Commons^™

Privacy's Double Standards, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Where the right to privacy exists, it should be available to all people. If not universally available, then privacy rights should be particularly accessible to marginalized individuals who are subject to greater surveillance and are less able to absorb the social costs of privacy violations. But in practice, there is evidence that people of privilege tend to fare better when they bring privacy tort claims than do non-privileged individuals. This disparity occurs despite doctrine suggesting that those who occupy prominent and public social positions are entitled to diminished privacy tort protections.

This Article unearths disparate outcomes in public disclosure tort …

Publicly Funded Objectors, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

On paper, class actions run like clockwork. But practice suggests the need for tune-ups: sometimes judges still approve settlements rife with red flags, and professional objectors may be more concerned with shaking down class counsel than with improving class members’ outcomes. The lack of data on the number of opt-outs, objectors, and claims rates fuels debates on both sides, for little is known about how well or poorly class members actually fare. This reveals a ubiquitous problem — information barriers confront judges, objectors, and even reformers. Rule 23’s answer is to empower objectors. At best, objectors are a partial fix. …

Suing The President For First Amendment Violations, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

On any given day, it seems, President Donald Trump can be found attacking, threatening, or punishing the press and other individuals whose speech he dislikes. His actions, moreover, inevitably raise the question: Do any of these individuals or organizations (or any future ones) have a viable claim against the President for violating their First Amendment rights?

One might think that the ability to sue the President for violation of the First Amendment would be relatively settled. The answer, however, is not quite that straightforward. Due to several unique qualities about the First Amendment and the presidency, it is not entirely …

Qualified Immunity After Ziglar V. Abbasi: The Case For A Categorical Approach, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

Qualified immunity protects officers from liability for damages unless they have violated clearly established rights, on the ground that it would be unfair and counterproductive to impose liability without notice of wrongdoing. In recent years, however, the Supreme Court has increasingly applied the doctrine to cases in which it serves little or no legitimate purpose. In Ziglar v. Abbasi, for example, the rights were clearly established but the Court held that the officers were immune due to lack of clarity on other issues in the case. Because holdings like Ziglar undermine the vindication of constitutional rights and the deterrence of …

The Impropriety Of Punitive Damages In Mass Torts, James A. Henderson Jr.

Georgia Law Review

Punitive damages have been around for centuries in classic
one-on-one tort actions and are here to stay. Mass torts, of
more recent origin, have matured to the point that this article
is comfortable referring to most of them as traditional.
Notwithstanding the legitimacy of both institutions when
employed separately, loud warning signals should sound
when, as with drinking and driving, they are combined.
Potentially destructive mixes of punitive damages and mass
torts have, unfortunately, been prevalent in traditional,fault-
based mass tort actions. The difficulties are mostly
administrative.Although punitive damages are conceptually
compatible with fault-based mass torts, courts administer
punitive awards …

A Single Symbolic Dollar: How Nominal Damages Can Keep Lawsuits Alive, Megan E. Cambre

Georgia Law Review

The Eleventh Circuit's August 2017 opinion in
Flanigan's Enterprises v. City of Sandy Springs
deepened a circuit split regarding the role of
nominal damages in the justiciabilityanalysis. The
critical question is whether, in cases involving
constitutional violations, a claim for nominal
damages alone suffices to confer standing or to
defeat mootness when other forms of relief are
unavailable or moot. The Second, Fifth, and Ninth
Circuits have all held that nominal damages alone
are enough, but not without contention from
dissenting judges. The First, Third, Fourth,
Seventh, Eighth, and D.C. Circuitshave considered
the question-but have not conclusively decided its
answer. …

A Cure From Rome For Montreal’S Illness: Article 5 Of The Rome I Regulation And Filling The Void In The 1999 Montreal Convention’S Regulation Of Carrier’S Liability For Personal Injury, Yehya I. Ibrahim Badr

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

An examination of the 1999 Montreal Convention shows that the drafters did not intend to lay down a comprehensive treaty that would organize a carrier’s liability for personal injury to passengers. They opted to achieve a certain level of uniformity through enacting a set of rules that tackled several key issues such as the grounds for a carrier’s liability, the available defenses, and the limits on the recoverable damages. Consequently, some unaddressed issues created a void in the Montreal Convention and were then left without a clear remedy. In this article, a distinction is made between two types of voids: …

Are Privacy Laws Deficient?, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy law around the world is deficient because it ignores design. Lawmakers have attempted to establish limits on the collection, use, and distribution of personal information. But they have largely overlooked the power of design. They have discounted the role that design plays in facilitating the conduct and harm privacy law is meant to prevent. Design pitches and picks privacy winners and losers, with people as data subjects and surveillance objects often on the losing side.