Torts Commons^™

Optimal Lead Plaintiffs, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Adequate representation in securities class actions is, at best, an afterthought and, at worst, usurped and subsumed by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act’s lead-plaintiff appointment process. Once appointed, the lead plaintiff bears a crushing burden: Congress expects her to monitor the attorney, thwart strike suits, and deter fraud, while judges expect her appointment as the “most adequate plaintiff” to resolve intra-class conflicts and adequate-representation problems. But even if she could be all things to all people, the lead plaintiff has little authority to do much aside from appointing lead counsel. Plus, class members in securities-fraud cases have diverse preferences …

Did The Sixth Circuit Get It Right In Stadnyk?: What To Do About The § 104(A)(2) Personal Injury Damages Exclusion, Genny Barrett

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tort Law—Hedonic Damages—Arkansas's Application Of Hedonic Damages To Wrongful-Death Suits: Is Arkansas's Method Misconceived?, Joshua Michael Robles

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ifit's Reusable Why Not Reuse It? The Reuse Of Single Use Medical Devices, Brian Wilson

Dalhousie Law Journal

The reprocessing and subsequent reuse of medical devices labelled by the manufacturer as 'single-use only' is a cost cutting strategy employed by many healthcare centres. However, attempting to extend the life of a device labelled as 'single-use only' raises a number of unique concerns surrounding the issue of legal liability specifically who should bear responsibility if someone suffers harm as a result of a reprocessed single-use device. Following an overview of the current regulatory environment, the potential tortious liability attaching to those who may be implicated in the reprocessing chain is discussed. Specifically, this paper examines the duty and standard …

Rethinking The Sovereign Status Of The Holy See: Towards A Greater Equality Of States And Greater Protection Of Citizens In United States Courts, James Fantau

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The note advocates for the reclassification of the Holy See from a sovereign state to an instrumentality under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). This change would enhance legal accountability, particularly in cases involving sexual abuse scandals, by allowing plaintiffs to sue the Holy See more effectively. The argument is based on legal tests, including the core functions test and the legal characteristics test, which suggest that the Holy See functions more as an instrumentality of the Vatican City State rather than a sovereign entity.

Re-Mapping Privacy Law: How The Google Maps Scandal Requires Tort Law Reform, Lindsey A. Strachan

Law Student Publications

This Comment explores how the law should handle such privacy claims. In analyzing both the photographic privacy claims as well as the Wi-Fi data privacy claims, this paper argues that current tort law is inadequate for such technologically advanced legal issues. Section II explores the background of Google Maps Street View and current privacy law, while Section III looks at the holes in current privacy torts in the context of the images displayed on Street View. Section IV examines the privacy implications surrounding the Wi-Fi scandal, and finally, Section V reviews the solution and provides a conclusion.

A Comparative Legal And Economic Approach To Third-Party Litigation Funding, Marco De Morpurgo

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

This article represents the first attempt to apply a comparative legal and economic approach to the study of third-party litigation funding (TPLF) - one of the most innovative trends in civil litigation financing today. TPLF consists of the practice where a third party offers financial support to a claimant in order to cover his litigation expenses, in return for a share of damages if the claim is successful. The third party receives no compensation if the claimant loses the suit. While such practice has been rapidly developing in the common law world (Australia, United States, and United Kingdom), in the …

When The Restatement Is Not A Restatement: The Curious Case Of The "Flagrant Trespasser", David Logan

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Positivism As An Idea About Morality, Martin J. Stone

Articles

I ask what a proper critical target for 'legal positivism' might be. I argue that utilitarian moral theory, and more generally fully directive moral theories, are unacknowledged motivations for legal positivism. Contemporary debate about 'the nature of law' is, historically speaking, much more of a footnote to utilitarianism than has been recognized.

Does Qualified Immunity Matter?, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

In litigation brought pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), most commentators agree that qualified immunity plays a substantial role in limiting plaintiffs' ability to recover compensation. Many find this tradeoff acceptable, in part because of concerns of fairness to government official defendants and in part because courts may still play a central role in announcing the law without worrying over the retroactive effect their decision will have on the personal funds of the defendant official.

This paper considers the different role that qualified immunity may play in …

Overcoming Under-Compensation And Under-Deterrence In Intentional Tort Cases: Are Statutory Multiple Damages The Best Remedy?, Stephen J. Shapiro

Mercer Law Review

There is a general agreement that the primary purpose of tort law is to compensate parties injured by the wrongful conduct of another. Typically, a prevailing plaintiff is awarded compensatory damages. The main purpose of tort law is to make the plaintiff whole, to the extent possible, in order to put the plaintiff in the same financial situation the plaintiff would have been in absent the defendant's actions. A prevailing plaintiff, however, will not normally be made whole by the award of a reasonable amount of compensatory damages. The primary reason for this insufficiency is that the plaintiff will have …

Summary Of Tuxedo International Inc. V. Rosenberg, 127 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 2, Nechole Garcia

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Appeal from the Eighth Judicial District Court’s dismissal of a complaint that alleged tort claims arising out of a contract containing a forum selection clause.

Group Consensus, Individual Consent, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Despite a rise in the number of personal-injury and product-liability cases consolidated through multi-district litigation, a decline in class-certification motions, and several newsworthy nonclass settlements such as the $4.85 billion Vioxx settlement and estimated $700 million Zyprexa settlements, little ink has been spilled on nonclass aggregation’s unique issues. Sections 3.17 and 3.18 of the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation are a noteworthy exception. This Article uses those principles as a lens for exploring thematic questions about the value of pluralism, group cohesion, governance, procedural justice, and legitimacy in nonclass aggregation.

Sections 3.17 and 3.18 make …

The Absence Of Legal Ethics In The Ali's Principles Of Aggregate Litigation: A Missed Opportunity - And More, Nancy J. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

There is little discussion of legal ethics in the American Law Institute’s recently adopted Principles of Aggregate Litigation, either in the black-letter rules or the comments. The primary exception is that the Principles devote several sections to the so-called aggregate settlement rule (Rule 1.8(g) of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct), although the purpose of these sections appears to be a proposed modification of that rule to permit claimants to agree in advance to be bound by majority approval of a particular settlement. The purpose of this essay is not to discuss the controversial aggregate settlement proposal (which the …

The Two-Trillion Dollar Carve-Out: Foreign Manufacturers Of Defective Goods And The Death Of H.R. 4678 In The 111th Congress, Andrew F. Popper

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Whatever happened to H.R. 4678, The Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act? While at first the bill looked like it would sail through, vocal and well-funded opposition from foreign manufacturers and their U.S. representatives placed its future in doubt – and ultimately killed the bill. Gross sales of foreign manufactured goods in the U.S. exceed two trillion dollars annually. Conservatively, there are tens of millions of defective, dangerous, and in some instances deadly goods produced abroad for sale in U.S. markets (e.g., Chinese dry-wall, toxic levels of lead paint on toys, contaminated pet food, allegedly lurching cars, infant cribs that to …

Swanson V. Brewster: Are The Minnesota Courts Reforming The Tort System?, Stephen P. Laitinen, Hilary J. Loynes

Journal of Law and Practice

No abstract provided.

Private Nuisance Law: A Window On Substantive Justice, Richard W. Wright

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Proving Causation: Probability Versus Belief, Richard W. Wright

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Ness Account Of Natural Causation: A Response To Criticisms, Richard W. Wright

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Defamation In Good Faith: An Argument For Restating The Defense Of Qualified Privilege, A.G. Harmon

Barry Law Review

Since the 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the standard for proving defamation has often proven insurmountable to public figure plaintiffs who claim their reputations have been hurt through libel or slander. But, the standard can prove equally insurmountable to “private figure” plaintiffs when a qualified, or “conditional,” privilege applies. Such privileges, intended to further the social policy of candor on certain proscribed occasions, can be claimed regarding otherwise questionable conversations as long as the dialogue is made: 1) in good faith; 2) about a subject in which the speaker has an interest or duty; 3) within …