Torts Commons^™

The Israeli Anti-Boycott Law: Should Artists Be Worried?, Arie Peled

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Though much has been written about the economic dimension of Arab boycotts against Israel, much less attention has been paid to the implications of wider calls for a cultural boycott against Israel. Part I of this note will outline the scope of Israel's boycott problem by looking to the history of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions ("BDS") movement, while focusing in particular on the cultural aspects of this boycott. It will then discuss the current dimensions of the domestic and international cultural boycott campaigns Israel faces. Part II will analyze the Israeli legislative response to the BDS movement through …

Fair Or Foul? Major League Baseball's Use Of A Tortious Interference Lawsuit As A Means Of Investigation, Michael S. Beck

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Protecting Victims From Liability Insurance Companies That Add Gratuitous Insult To Grievous Injury, Francis J. Mootz Iii

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Long-Term Tort: In Search Of A New Causation Framework For Natural Resources Damages, Sanne H. Knudsen

Articles

Recent scientific evidence is proving that toxic releases have long-term, unintended, and harmful consequences for the marine environment. Though a new paradigm is emerging in the scientific literature--one demonstrating that long-term impacts from oil spills are more significant than previously thought--legal scholars, regulators, and courts have yet to consider the law's ability to remedy long-term ecological harms.

While scholars have exhaustively debated causation questions related to latent injuries for toxic torts, they have overlooked the equally important and conceptually similar causation problems of long-term damages in the natural resource context. Likewise, only a few courts have considered the standards of …

Disaggregative Mechanisms: The New Frontier Of Mass-Claims Resolution Without Class Actions, Jaime Dodge

Scholarly Works

Aggregation has long been viewed as the primary if not sole vehicle for mass claims resolution. For a half-century, scholars have consistently viewed the consolidated litigation of similar claims through joinder, class actions and more recently multi-district litigation as the only mechanism for efficiently resolving mass claims. In this Article, I challenge that long-standing and fundamental conception. The Article seeks to reconceptualize our understanding of mass claims resolution, arguing that we are witnessing the birth of a second, unexplored branch of mass claims resolution mechanisms — which I term “disaggregative” dispute resolution systems because they lack the traditional aggregation of …

Remanding Multidistrict Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Multidistrict litigation has frequently been described as a “black hole” because transfer is typically a one-way ticket. The numbers lend truth to this proposition. As of 2010, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation remanded only 3.425% of cases to their original districts. That number dwindled to 3.1% in 2012, and to a scant 2.9% in 2013. Retaining cases in hopes of forcing a global settlement can cause a constellation of complications. These concerns range from procedural justice issues over selecting a forum and correcting error, to substantive concerns about fidelity to state laws, to undermining democratic participation ideals fulfilled through …

Surprisingly Punitive Damages, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

Damages can add up to super-punitive amounts in unintended ways. To take a textbook example: The Defendant has caused an industrial accident or other mass tort. Plaintiff 1 sues, winning punitive damages based on the reprehensibility of that original act. Plaintiff 2 also sues – and also wins punitive damages on the same grounds. So do Plaintiff 3, Plaintiff 4, and so forth. If each of these punitive awards is directed at the same general badness of that original act, then these punishments are redundant. When such redundancy occurs, even damages that are meant to be punitive can reach surprisingly …

Harm And The Fluid Nature Of Identity In Wrongful Life Cases Involving Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, Matthew Reisman

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Preemption Without Borders: The Modern Conflation Of Tort And Contract Liabilities, Max N. Helveston

Georgia Law Review

Medical device jurisprudence has taken a turn for the worse recently, turning a deaf ear to patients who have been injured or killed by devices and covertly expanding the boundaries of federal preemption in ways that threaten fundamental contractual principles. Ever since the Court's holding in Riegel v. Medtronic, district and appellate courts have effectively immunized the manufacturers of certain devices from contract, as well as tort, liabilities. The lower courts' rulings are not only

problematic as a matter of law, but raise novel concerns about federal regulatory preemption undermining individuals' contract rights. A comprehensive analysis of the Court's medical …

Dusty Order: Law Enforcement And Participant Cooperation At Burning Man, Manuel A. Gomez

Faculty Books

Media depictions of Burning Man focus on the picturesque and eccentric appearance of the weeklong affair. The event is sometimes misportrayed as a lawless environment where participants are encouraged to engage in rowdy behavior. Most carnivalesque events offer an escape from reality and are generally thought to enable unruly conduct. Despite stereotypes, Burning Man is a different beast. Not only is the crime rate in Black Rock City lower than any other city of comparable size, but Burners show a high level of cooperative and law abiding behavior that helps maintain the social order without depending on official means of …

An Exploration Of “Non-Economic” Damages In Civil Jury Awards, Herbert M. Kritzer, Guangya Liu, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

Using three primary data sources plus three supplemental sources discussed in an appendix, this paper examines how well non-economic damages could be predicted by economic damages and at how the ratio of non-economic damages to economic damages changed as the magnitude of the economic damages awarded by juries increased. We found a mixture of consistent and inconsistent patterns across our various datasets. One fairly consistent pattern was the tendency for the ratio of non-economic to economic damages to decline as the amount of economic damages increased. Moreover, the variability of the ratio also tended to decline as the amount of …

Private Law In The Gaps, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Journal Articles

Private law subjects like tort, contract, and property are traditionally taken to be at the core of the common law tradition, yet statutes increasingly intersect with these bodies of doctrine. This Article draws on recent work in private law theory and statutory interpretation to consider afresh what courts should do with private law in statutory gaps. In particular, it focuses on statutes touching on tort law, a field at the leading edge of private law theory. This Article's analysis unsettles some conventional wisdom about the intersection of private law and statutes. Many leading tort scholars and jurists embrace a regulatory …

The Plaintiffs Keep Getting Richer, The Manufacturers Just Stay Poor: Design Defect Litigation In Georgia Post-Banks, Davis S. Popper

Georgia Law Review

How much proof of a reasonable alternative design is necessary to survive a claim for defective design and when should proof of a reasonable alternative design be denied as irrelevant to claims pertaining to products that exhibit open and obvious dangers? Design defect litigation is particularly important because it involves claims that take entire product lines out of the market and cost manufacturers exorbitant losses and expose them to steep damages. In these cases, plaintiffs often suffer life- changing injuries or death. In this Note, I provide a history of design defect litigation in the United States. In particular,I focus …

European Legal Development: The Case Of Tort: Comparative Studies In The Development Of The Law Of Tort In Europe, Vol 9, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

This review addresses volumes 7-9 of the series Comparative Studies in the Development of the Law of Torts in Europe, edited by John Bell and David Ibbetson and published by Cambridge University Press.

Why Answer?, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Market In Unmatured Tort Claims: Twenty-Five Years Later, Stephen G. Marks

Faculty Scholarship

In an article in 1989 in the Virginia Law Review, Professor Robert Cooter argued for changes in the law that would facilitate the development of a market in unmatured tort claims. An unmatured tort claim is a potential claim that a potential victim has before any injury has occurred. Cooter proposed that potential victims have the right to sell their unmatured tort claims. That is, Cooter proposed that potential victims be allowed to sell their right to sue even before an accident or injury ever occurs. Even twenty-five years later, the proposal remains both bold and imaginative, and yet it …

Information And Causation In Tort Law: Generalizing The Learned Hand Test For Causation Cases, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper discusses the economics of causation in tort law, describing precise implications for precautionary incentives when courts are and are not perfectly informed. With precautionary incentives identified, we can ask whether the causation inquiry enhances welfare, and if so under what conditions. Perhaps the most important innovation applies to the Hand Formula. When causation is an issue, the probability of causal intervention should be part of the Hand test, and the generalized Hand test offers a method of distinguishing significant classes of causation cases. I close with implications for the moral significance of causation and for economic analysis of …

Sufficiency Of The Evidence Does Not Meet Daubert Standards: A Critique Of The Green-Sanders Proposal, Aaron Twerski, Lior Sapir

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Product Liability, Franklin P. Brannen Jr.

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys developments in Georgia product liability law between June 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013. The Article covers noteworthy cases decided during this period by the Georgia Court of Appeals, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States district courts located in Georgia.

The Seat-Belt Defense In Georgia, Jacob E. Daly

Mercer Law Review

For a doctrine of common-law origin, the seat-belt defense is a relatively youthful fifty years old. Credit for the first use of this defense has been attributed to the defendant in Stockinger v. Dunisch, a 1964 case in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, in which the plaintiff's damages were reduced by 10% based on the jury's finding that she was negligent for failing to use a seat belt. Despite this initial success, most states have rejected the defense, some legislatively and others judicially, and therefore exclude evidence of a plaintiffs failure to use an available seat belt. The Georgia Court of …