Torts Commons^™

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

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

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 …

Defense Against Outrage And The Perils Of Parasitic Torts, Geoffrey C. Rapp

Georgia Law Review

Two prominent narratives in tort law scholarship
address the increasing recognition of claims for loss of
emotional tranquility and the expanding privilege to use
force in defense of self and others. This Article explores a
puzzle in tort law that challenges these traditional
accounts. Can force be used to defend against intentional
extreme or outrageous conduct threatening a person with
severe emotional distress? The answer in the case law and
articulated doctrine appears to be "no." The law permits
the use of force to protect dignitary interests, in the case of
offensive battery and assault, but seems to deny the …

"I'M Not Gay, M'Kay?": Should Falsely Calling Someone A Homosexual Be Defamatory?, Haven Ward

Georgia Law Review

This Article argues a statement misidentifying a personas homosexual should be deemed not defamatory as a matter of law. Whether a statement is defamatory changes as social mores and policies evolve, such that a statement deemed defamatory in the past may not be defamatory now. For example, historically, courts deemed statements misidentifying a person as homosexual defamatory per se. As society's opinion of homosexuality began to improve, courts instead required proof of special damages for a plaintiff to maintain a defamation action for such statements. No American court, however, has yet held that such a statement is not defamatory as …

Tort Damages And The New Science Of Happiness, Rick Swedloff, Peter H. Huang

Publications

The happiness revolution is coming to legal scholarship. Based on empirical data about the how and why of positive emotions, legal scholars are beginning to suggest reforms to legal institutions. In this article we aim to redirect and slow down this revolution.

One of their first targets of these legal hedonists is the jury system for tort damages. In several recent articles, scholars have concluded that early findings about hedonic adaptation and affective forecasting undermine tort awards for pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and other non-economic damages. In the shadow of a broader debate about …