Torts Commons^™

Practical Alternatives To The Rule Of Joint And Several Liability: Regulatory Negligence As A Case Study, Boaz Segal

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Money For Justice: Plaintiffs' Lawyers And Social Justice Tort Litigation, Gilat J. Bachar

Cardozo Law Review

Tort lawsuits brought in response to social injustice occasionally generate incentives for entrepreneurial plaintiffs' lawyers to get involved in the litigation. What ethical responsibilities do such lawyers navigate in this space? And to what extent are they interested in, and well-positioned to produce, social change? The Article addresses these questions using a previously uncharted case study on civil actions for damages filed by Palestinians against the Israeli government. Through fifty-five in-depth, semi structured interviews with the various types of lawyers involved in the litigation, alongside quantitative analysis of an original dataset of 300 judicial opinions, the Article reveals how fee-for-service …

Claim Preclusion And The Problem Of Fictional Consent, Lindsey D. Simon

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Airline Deregulation In The Fourth Circuit, Timothy M. Ravich

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tort Law, Amirthalingam Kumaralingam, Gary Kok Yew Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This review examines the ten most significant decisions in tort law for 2020. It was an interesting year for the range of significant decisions in tort law handed down by the courts on matters including limitation period, medical negligence, the scope of duty in negligence, breach of confidence, conspiracy, and defamation.

Reconsidering Wrongful Birth, Luke Isaac Haqq

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

The tort action for “wrongful birth” has a history dating back at least to the

1960s, when it emerged along with the claims for “wrongful life” and “wrongful

conception.” Since their incipience, this trio of lawsuits has generated an expansive

commentary, reaching into thousands of articles in the legal literature alone. With a

divide among federal circuits on wrongful birth only beginning to gain visibility with

Doherty v. Merck & Co. in 2018 and Zelt v. Xytex Corp. in 2019, the wrongful

birth claim could potentially provide a site for the Supreme Court to revisit national

abortion policy.

The …

The Heavy Hand Of Amazon: A Seller Not A Neutral Platform, Edward J. Janger, Aaron D. Twerski

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Since the adoption of Section 402A of the Second Restatement of Torts, every party in a product’s distribution chain has been potentially liable for injuries caused by product defects. Consumers who buy from reputable sellers are almost always guaranteed to have a solvent defendant if injured by a product defect. Amazon, though responsible for a vast number of retail sales, has sought to avoid liability by claiming that it is not a seller but a neutral platform that merely facilitates third-party sales to consumers. With two significant exceptions, most courts have sided with Amazon and concluded that Amazon is not …

Mass Torts: Dispute Resolution In France And The United States--The Vioxx And Mediator Cases Compared, Fred Einbinder Mr.

Washington International Law Journal

Dispute resolution in legal systems has largely been designed for handling issues between small groups of individuals or organizations. Obtaining legal redress for those injured by mass torts and using the law as a means to prevent future occurrences has presented challenges for the development of effective dispute resolution mechanisms to obtain relief for plaintiffs and deter future tortfeasors. A comparison of French and American mass tort law and practice offers a fertile field for useful comparative study given the significant differences in approach taken by each country’s legal system. These differences derive as much from history, politics, the attitudes …

Clarifying Washington's Approach To The Independent Duty Doctrine, Margaret Wykowski

Washington Law Review

When faced with limited or no recovery under contract law, resourceful lawyers often turn to tort law. The economic loss rule restricts this practice by barring recovery in tort for solely economic losses. However, what qualifies as “economic loss” is not always clear. In 2010, the Washington State Supreme Court announced it was clarifying the economic loss rule by adopting the independent duty doctrine. Rather than analyze the type of loss suffered, the independent duty doctrine determines whether a party owed a tort duty independent of the relevant contract, closely mirroring a traditional tort inquiry. When establishing the independent duty …

The Right Of Publicity As Market Regulator In The Age Of Social Media, Barbara Bruni

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Neglect Of Persons With Severe Brain Injury To The United States: An International Human Rights Analysis, Tamar Ezer, Megan S. Wright, Joseph J. Wright

Articles

Brain injury contributes more to death and disability globally than any other traumatic incident. While the past decade has seen significant medical advances, laws and policies remain stumbling blocks to treatment and care. The quality of life of persons with severe brain injury often declines with unnecessary institutionalization and inadequate access to rehabilitation and assistive technologies. This raises a host of rights violations that are hidden, given that persons with severe brain injury are generally invisible and marginalized. This article highlights the current neglect and experiences of persons with severe brain injury in the United States, analyzing the rights to …

Held Accountable: Should Gun Manufacturers Be Held Liable For The Criminal Use Of Their Products, Benjamin Caryan

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This comment starts with a review of the most stringent laws currently enacted. After going over what is enacted, it will discuss the reasons given as to why gun manufacturers should be held liable and under what theories, including tort liability and public nuisance theories. Next, it will cover novel approaches to the strict liability, including arguments like negligent distribution, entrustment, and marketing. It will discuss similarities between the tobacco, automobile, and alcohol industry with the firearms industry. It will then go over how the recent push for gun legislation affected the sale and purchase of firearms. Lastly, to summarize, …

Anti-Slapp Coverage And The First Amendment: Hurdles To Defamation Suits In Political Campaigns, David L. Hudson Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

Defamation cases often arise out of intemperate or offensive statements made in political campaigns. These comments may refer to a candidate’s criminal history, familial conduct, or other matters. Whatever the subject, emotions undoubtedly run high during hotly contested campaigns. However, First Amendment protection is at its zenith when speakers engage in political speech, and speech about political candidates is inherently political speech. Thus, defamation suits arising out of political campaigns face significant hurdles, including (1) anti-SLAPP statutes and a greater public awareness of SLAPP suits; (2) a history and tradition of mudslinging and enhanced protection of political speech during political …

Who Sells? Testing Amazon.Com For Product Defect Liability In Pennsylvania And Beyond, Aaron Doyer

Journal of Law and Policy

Pennsylvania, like other states, has struggled over the past few decades to apply the policy principles of product defect law—a tort characterized by strict liability. Because strict liability bypasses the traditional requirement in tort that a plaintiff prove the defendant’s negligence, and instead requires only a showing that the plaintiff was injured by a product sold in a defective condition, these inquiries raise a deceptively simple question: who sells? Recently, in a landmark case in Pennsylvania, the Third Circuit made waves by declaring Amazon.com, an enormous online marketplace, the legal “seller” of a product shipped and sold by a vendor …

Calculating Compensation Sums For Private Law Wrongs: Underlying Imprecisions, Necessary Questions, And Toward A Plausible Account Of Damages For Lost Years Of Life, Michael Pressman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The ubiquitous corrective-justice goals of “making a party whole” or “returning a party to the position she was in” are typically understood in monetary terms, and in this context, it is fairly clear what these terms mean. If, as this Article argues, these corrective-justice goals should instead be understood in terms of something that has intrinsic value, such as happiness, various imprecisions come to the fore. This Article identifies and explores these imprecisions and, in so doing, articulates a novel framework that can be used for understanding and systematizing our approach to private law remedies. This is the Article’s first …

When Worlds Collide: Protecting Physical World Interests Against Virtual World Malfeasance, Hilary Silvia, Nanci K. Carr

Michigan Technology Law Review

If a virtual-world-game character is cast upon real-world property without the consent of the landowner, inducing or encouraging players to trespass, is the virtual-world creator liable for damages? The United States Supreme Court has recognized that digital technology presents novel issues, the resolution of which must anticipate its further rapid development. It is beyond dispute that protective legislation will be unable to keep up with rapidly evolving technology. The burden of anticipating and addressing issues presented by emerging technologies will ultimately fall upon the businesses responsible for generating them. This duty was most notably adopted by the creators of Pokémon …

An Essay On The Quieting Of Products Liability Law, Aaron D. Twerskii

Cornell Law Review

For several decades, courts and commentators have disagreed as to whether the standard for liability in product design defect cases should be based on risk-utility tradeoffs or disappointed consumer expectations. Although a strong majority opt for risk-utility a significant minority of courts adopt the consumer expectations test. This Essay contends that as a practical matter in jurisdictions that allow for recovery in design defect cases on a consumer expectations theory, plaintiffs introduce a reasonable alternative design as the predicate for recovery. In fifteen of the seventeen states that allow recovery based on consumer expectations the author could not find a …

Tort As Private Administration, Nathaniel Donahue, John Fabian Witt

Cornell Law Review

What does tort law do? This Article develops an account of the law of torts for the age of settlement. A century ago, leading torts jurists proposed that tort doctrine's main function was to allocate authority between judge and jury. In the era of the disappearing trial, we propose that tort law's hidden function is to shape the process by which private parties settle. In particular, core doctrines in tort help to structure and sustain the systems of private administration by which injury claims are actually resolved. Though an observer could hardly guess it from judge-centric theories of tort or …

Theory Of The Nudnik: The Future Of Consumer Activism And What We Can Do To Stop It, Yonathan A. Arbel, Roy Shapira

Vanderbilt Law Review

How do consumers hold sellers accountable and enforce market norms? This Article contributes to our understanding of consumer markets in three ways. First, the Article identifies the role of a small subset of consumers—the titular “nudniks”—as engines of market discipline. Nudniks are those who call to complain, speak with managers, post online reviews, and file lawsuits. Typified by an idiosyncratic utility function and certain unique personality traits, nudniks pursue action where most consumers remain passive. Although derided in courtrooms and the court of public opinion, we show that nudniks can solve consumer collective action problems, leading to broad market improvements. …

Aging Out Arbitration For Wrongful Death Suits In Nursing Homes, Courtney Dyer

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The first section of this article will discuss the significance of removing arbitration agreements from wrongful death claims and implementing mediation instead. The second section will detail the background of arbitration clauses in nursing homes. The third section will review state acts that have opposed the use of arbitration agreements for wrongful death claims in nursing homes. The fourth section will analyze cases that have challenged arbitration agreements in nursing homes for wrongful death claims. The fifth section will propose compulsory mediation and multi-tiered dispute resolution clauses as substitutes for arbitration clauses. Finally, the sixth section will consider potential objections …