Torts Commons^™

Torts, David Hricik

Mercer Law Review

The Supreme Court of Georgia’s decisions from June 1, 2021 to May 31, 2022, ran the gamut in terms of both significance and subjects. Among the major decisions affecting Georgia tort law were the court’s decisions addressing apportionment, personal jurisdiction, defamation, products liability, and intellectual property.

Thaler V. Vidal: Artificial Intelligence—Can The Invented Become The Inventor?, Michelle Lavrichenko

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Absolute Immunity From Defamation Suits In Private Quasi-Judicial Proceedings

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

No abstract provided.

Liability For Public Deception: Linking Fossil Fuel Disinformation To Climate Damages, Jessica A. Wentz, Benjamin Franta

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Over two dozen U.S. states and municipalities have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, seeking abatement orders and compensation for climate damages based on theories such as public nuisance, negligence, and failure to warn, and alleging these companies knew about the dangers of their products, intentionally concealed those dangers, created doubt about climate science, and undermined public support for climate action. This Article examines how tort plaintiffs can establish a causal nexus between public deception and damages, drawing from past litigation, particularly claims filed against manufacturers for misleading the public about the risks of tobacco, lead paint, and opioids. A …

Medical Harm Without Negligence, Valerie Gutmann Koch

Fordham Law Review

In December 2019, seven women from one family underwent highly invasive surgeries based on genetic test results that indicated that each were at significant risk of developing cancer by age seventy. Subsequently, after procedures that (among other things) permanently scarred and disfigured their bodies and ended their chances of having biological children, they learned that their particular mutation was not, in fact, pathogenic.

This Article focuses on a previously under-recognized problem: what happens when a patient’s previously classified pathogenic variant is downgraded to uncertain (or even benign) status? Intuitively, it might seem that the genetic testing company, the surgeons, or …

When Sexual Assault Becomes Incident To Military Service, Lauren C. Brady

Journal of Law and Policy

For seventy-two years, federal courts have barred military servicemembers who are survivors of sexual assault from recovery under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The Feres doctrine, promulgated from the Supreme Court case Feres v. United States, became the foundation for federal courts’ decisions that sexual assault is incident to one’s service in the military. Courts’ over-deference to the military has enabled a system that turns a blind eye to perpetrators and abusive environments on bases. However, the Ninth Circuit recently turned the tide in FTCA cases, holding in Spletstoser v. Hyten that military sexual assault survivors should be permitted …

Due Process Alignment In Mass Restructurings, Sergio J. Campos, Samir D. Parikh

Articles

Mass tort defendants have recently begun exiting multidistrict litigation by filing for bankruptcy. This new strategy ushers defendants into a far more hospitable forum that offers accelerated resolution of all state and federal claims held by both current and future victims.

Bankruptcy's structural, procedural, and substantive benefits also provide defendants with unique optionality. Bankruptcy's resolution promise is alluring, but the process relies on a very large assumption: that future victims can be compelled to relinquish property rights in their cause of action against the corporate defendant and others without consent or notice. Bankruptcy builds an entire resolution structure on the …

Aggregation And Abuse: Mass Torts In Bankruptcy, Edward J. Janger

Fordham Law Review

Bankruptcy courts have become the favored forum for large corporate defendants who seek global resolution of mass tort liability claims. Whether this forum choice benefits the victims of those mass torts or facilitates their exploitation is unclear. The features of bankruptcy law that have made bankruptcy court attractive to defendants can be efficiency enhancing, but they can also be used opportunistically and beyond their proper scope. As a result, their use must be subject to safeguards. The good news is that, where torts of the debtor itself are concerned, the U.S. Bankruptcy Code already contains the necessary tools. This Essay …

Dissonance And Distress In Bankruptcy And Mass Torts, Andrew D. Bradt, Zachary D. Clopton, D. Theodore Rave

Fordham Law Review

This Essay reviews the highly successful Fordham Law Review symposium entitled Mass Torts Evolve: The Intersection of Aggregate Litigation and Bankruptcy, held in 2022. The symposium brought together judges, scholars, and practitioners who work on multidistrict litigation (MDL), bankruptcy, or both. The symposium was successful because it brought these groups into conversation at a time when high-profile mass tort defendants are increasingly turning to bankruptcy to escape MDL, while others involved in the MDL process seek to keep them in. The symposium was also successful—and distressing, in our view—because it highlighted disturbing trends in complex litigation.

This Essay makes …

Due Process Alignment In Mass Restructurings, Sergio Campos, Samir D. Parikh

Fordham Law Review

Mass tort defendants have recently begun exiting multidistrict litigation by filing for bankruptcy. This new strategy ushers defendants into a far more hospitable forum that offers accelerated resolution of all state and federal claims held by both current and future victims. Bankruptcy’s structural, procedural, and substantive benefits also provide defendants with unique optionality.

Bankruptcy’s resolution promise is alluring, but the process relies on a very large assumption: that future victims can be compelled to relinquish property rights in their cause of action against the corporate defendant and others without consent or notice. Bankruptcy builds an entire resolution structure on the …

Covid-19 Aggregate Litigation: The Search For The Upstream Wrongdoer, Robert H. Klonoff

Fordham Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated many suits—including thousands of class actions—in which plaintiffs claim that defendants caused economic or health-related harm. Although the COVID-19 context may have led many plaintiffs’ lawyers to believe that the cases would be received with great sympathy, courts thus far have been very cautious, focusing closely—as they do in non-COVID cases—on whether the defendant has breached clear contractual commitments or has engaged in tortious or other wrongdoing. If anything, courts have been more skeptical and cautious in the COVID-19 context, recognizing that everyone has suffered due to the pandemic and that, in many instances, defendants …

Aggregation And Abuse: Mass Torts In Bankruptcy, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Problem Of Nondebtor Releases In Bankruptcy, Adam J. Levitin

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, nondebtor releases have become a common feature of big-case Chapter 11 bankruptcy practice. Nondebtor releases involve the release of creditor claims against third-party nondebtors pursuant to a bankruptcy plan confirmation order. Some nondebtor releases are consensual, meaning that they are done with the assent of the releasing creditor, but some are not.

This Essay argues that all nonconsensual nondebtor releases in bankruptcy are unconstitutional. The constitutional infirmities of nondebtor releases are layered: all non debtor releases—consensual or nonconsensual—are outside the scope of Congress’s authority under an original understanding of the Bankruptcy Clause; all nonconsensual nondebtor releases are …

The New Mass Torts Bargain, Samir D. Parikh

Fordham Law Review

Mass torts create a unique scale of harm and liabilities. Corporate tortfeasors are desperate to settle claims but condition settlement on the resolution of substantially all claims at a known price—commonly referred to as a global settlement. Without this, corporate tortfeasors are willing to continue with protracted and fragmented litigation across jurisdictions. Global settlements can be elusive in these cases. Mass torts are oftentimes characterized by heterogeneous victim groups that include both current victims and future victims—individuals whose harm has not yet manifested and may not do so for years. Despite this incongruence, future-victim claims must be aggregated as part …

Unsticking American Tort Theory, Benjamin Sundholm

University of Cincinnati Law Review

In the United States, the debate over the foundations of tort law is at an impasse. On one side of the dispute, economic theorists contend that tort law is primarily concerned with the forward-looking aim of maximizing societal wealth. The most prominent critics of this view claim that an economic analysis of tort law cannot explain the field’s backward-looking concern with achieving corrective justice by remedying wrongs. Despite the strength of this critique, economic theorists have a legitimate response available to them: corrective justice describes the reparative aspect of tort law, but it stops short of providing a justificatory account …

Collaborative Constructions: Designing High School History Curriculum With The Lost & Found Game Series, Owen Gottlieb, Shawn Clybor

Articles

This chapter addresses design research and iterative curriculum design for the Lost & Found games series. The Lost & Found card-to-mobile series is set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the twelfth century and focuses on religious laws of the period. The first two games focus on Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, a key Jewish law code. A new expansion module which was in development at the time of the fieldwork described in this article that introduces Islamic laws of the period, and a mobile prototype of the initial strategy game has been developed with support National Endowment for the Humanities. The …

Efektivitas Alat Bukti Dalam Pembuktian Suatu Perjanjian Lisan, Aaron Pietter

Lex Patrimonium

Verbal agreement is something that cannot be separated in our daily life. It is confirmed that in every moment we always make a verbal agreement consciously or unconsciously. Within the scope of the court, verbal agreement is also used by the parties to prove their arguments so they can earn their rights and fullfill the other party obligations. Compared to the other type of evidence, verbal agreement have its own power and effectiveness level when being used as a legitive evidence before the court. To observe about the application and effectiveness of a verbal agreement as a legitive evidence before …

Perlindungan Hukum Bagi Kreditur Dalam Eksekusi Perjanjian Kredit Dengan Jaminan Hak Tanggungan, Muhammad Affandi

Lex Patrimonium

One of the guarantees in the credit agreement is a mortgage guarantee, where in the mortgage guarantee agreement, the assets guaranteed by the debtor to be used as collateral are land rights which can be in the form of buildings, plants, and works that already exist or will exist which are one unit with the land, and which belongs to the holder of the land rights whose burden is expressly stated in the Deed of Granting Mortgage concerned. From this study, the author aims to examine how legal protection for creditors in the execution of credit agreements with collateral rights …

Perlindungan Hukum Kreditur Terhadap Peralihan Jaminan Hak Tanggungan Dalam Jual Beli Piutang Melalui Cessie (Studi Kasus: Putusan Pengadilan Negeri Nomor 79/Pdt.G/2019 Pn Tab Dan Putusan Peninjauan Kembali Nomor 754 Pk/Pdt/2011), Vanessa Maurizkha

Lex Patrimonium

Banks act as creditors for selling receivables through a cessie to credit. Problems that arise after the transfer of receivables are identical to the relevance of the validity of the cessie to the mortgage guarantee transfer stipulated in the main agreement. There are differences in the legal concequences in each conditions. The problems discussed in this research are the mechanism through a cessie in conventional banks according to Indonesian law, the development of the regulation on registration of transfer of mortgage, and the legal consequences of the act (cessie) on objects of mortgage guarantee based on the District Court Decision …

Tinjauan Yuridis Pengesahan Anak Luar Kawin Yang Dicatatkan Setelah Ayah Dari Anak Meninggal Dunia (Studi Kasus: Penetapan Pengadilan Negeri Jakarta Pusat Nomor: 36/Pdt.P/2020/Pn.Jkt.Pst.), Devina Delfian

Lex Patrimonium

The birth of a child from an unregistered polygamous marriage according to the prevailing laws is a juridical phenomenon that cannot be denied. As the part of legal events, unregistered polygamous marriages can bring further legal consequences to children born out of wedlock, which in law children born out of wedlock have a lower position than children born from legal marriages. Because of these differences, the law provides a solution for children born out of wedlock to have the same legal status as children born from legal marriages, namely through child legalization. This research will be continued by focusing on …