The Liability Century


Book Description

Kenneth Abraham explores the development and interdependency of the tort liability regime and the insurance system in the United States during the twentieth century and beyond, including the events of September 11, 2001. From its beginning late in the nineteenth century, the availability of liability insurance led to the creation of new forms of liability, heavily influenced expansion of the liabilities that already existed, and continually promoted increases in the amount of money that was awarded in tort suits. A “liability-and-insurance spiral” emerged, in which the availability of liability insurance encouraged the imposition of more liability, and, in turn, the imposition of liability encouraged the further spread of insurance. Liability insurance was not merely a source of funding for ever-greater amounts of tort liability. Liability insurers came to dominate tort litigation. They defended lawsuits against their policyholders, and they decided which cases to settle, fight, or appeal. The very idea behind insurance––that spreading losses among large numbers of policyholders is desirable––came to influence the ideology of tort law. To serve the aim of loss spreading, liability had to expand. Today the tort liability and insurance systems constantly interact, and to reform one the role of the other must be fully understood.




Understanding Enterprise Liability


Book Description

In recent years critics have assailed the cost, inefficiency, and unfairness of American tort law, including products liability and medical malpractice. Yet victims of accidental injury who look to the tort system for deserved compensation often find it a formidable obstacle. Those who seek to reform tort law find legislatures, particularly the United States Congress, paralyzed by the clash of powerful special interest groups. Understanding Enterprise Liability sheds new light on the raging tort reform debate by challenging its fundamental assumptions. Offering historical insights and fresh perspectives on the politics and possibilities for sensible reform, Virginia Nolan and Edmund Ursin pragmatically assess alternative routes to a workable, balanced, and equitable system of compensation for personal injury. They offer a specific proposal, based on the precedent of strict products liability that incorporates the insights of no-fault compensation plan scholarship to create an enterprise liability doctrine that should appeal to courts and to tort reformers.




Tort Law in America


Book Description

Widely regarded as a standard in the field, G. Edward White's Tort Law in America is a concise and accessible history of the way legal scholars and judges have conceptualized the subject of torts, the reasons that changes in certain rules and doctrines have occurred, and the people who brought about these changes. Now in an expanded edition, Tort Law in America features a new preface that places the book within the current scholarship and two new chapters covering developments in American tort law over the past fifteen years. White approaches his subject from four perspectives: intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, the phenomenon of professionalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, and the recurrent concerns of tort law since its emergence as a discrete field. He puts the intellectual history of this unique branch of law into the general picture of philosophy, sociology, and literature in what is not only a major work of legal scholarship but also a tour de force for anyone interested in American intellectual history.




The Liability Century


Book Description

Kenneth Abraham explores the development and interdependency of the tort liability regime and the insurance system in the United States during the twentieth century and beyond, including the events of September 11, 2001. From its beginning late in the nineteenth century, the availability of liability insurance led to the creation of new forms of liability, heavily influenced expansion of the liabilities that already existed, and continually promoted increases in the amount of money that was awarded in tort suits. A “liability-and-insurance spiral” emerged, in which the availability of liability insurance encouraged the imposition of more liability, and, in turn, the imposition of liability encouraged the further spread of insurance. Liability insurance was not merely a source of funding for ever-greater amounts of tort liability. Liability insurers came to dominate tort litigation. They defended lawsuits against their policyholders, and they decided which cases to settle, fight, or appeal. The very idea behind insurance––that spreading losses among large numbers of policyholders is desirable––came to influence the ideology of tort law. To serve the aim of loss spreading, liability had to expand. Today the tort liability and insurance systems constantly interact, and to reform one the role of the other must be fully understood.




Product Liability Entering the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

A Brookings Institution Press and American Enterprise Institute publication Are liability "crises" an inevitable part of the modern industrial landscape? Does the inherent nature of the insurance industry promote recurring liability crises? What have been the effects of the liability reforms of the 1990s? Should lawyers be given de facto regulatory authority? This report provides perspective on these and other key issues concerning the law and economics of products liability. The authors begins with a brief description of the evolution of products liability doctrine in the U.S., up to the point of the liability crisis of the late 1980s. They discuss the economic implications of product risk for both consumers and producers, offer economic hypothesis on the implications of the increased scope of liability and subsequent reforms, and provide an update of trends in litigation and liability law. The book ends with a discussion of pending legislation and prospects for further improvements. Moore and Viscusi make the point that effective liability policy calls for a balancing of the incentives for improved public safety on one hand, and the benefits of new and existing products on the other.




Principles of Products Liability


Book Description

The varied doctrines, disputes, competing conceptions of liability and responsibility, and leading cases in this area are all discussed in this book. Unlike other books in this subject area, this title fully develops the underlying concepts and then repeatedly shows how the important doctrines can be understood in terms of a few basic principles. The book also provides insights into the processes of the common law, while locating products liability within tort law more generally. The book will be of interest both for the specialized study of products liability and the more general study of tort law.




Tort Liability for Mental Harm


Book Description

"This book unpacks in comprehensive detail every important aspect of its topic... (It) is and will remain for a long time a work of central importance on its topic in Australia and beyond." - From the Foreword, by the Honourable Robert S French, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. This title explores the issue of tort liability for mental harm and renews the landmark work previously published as Mullany & Handford's Tort Liability Psychiatric Damage (in 1993 and 2006) It provides specialised consideration of negligence liability for what the Civil Liability Acts now refer to as mental harm, also described as 'psychiatric damage' or 'nervous shock'. It draws widely on the case law and refers in detail to the legislation across Australia to address key issues such as the kinds of mental harm for which a claim will lie, who may claim and in what circumstances. This third iteration of the title offers a comprehensive reference work covering the law in Australia. In the 21st century the law of torts in Australia has steadily diverged from other common law jurisdictions and followed an independent path. Accordingly, this edition concentrates primarily on Australian law while continuing to discuss the law in other common law jurisdictions where it is pertinent to Australian developments or when a useful contrast can be drawn.




A Historical Introduction to the Law of Obligations


Book Description

David Ibbetson exposes the historical layers beneath the modern rules and principles of contract, tort, and unjust enrichment. Small-scale changes caused by lawyers exploiting procedural advantages in their clients' interest are described & analyzed.




Negligence


Book Description

Der Autor zielt auf eine dynamische Vergleichung der Probleme auf dem Gebiet des Rechts der unerlaubten Handlung, die sich in der Geschichte auf der einen Seite auf dem Kontinent Westeuropas, auf der anderen Seite im Bereich des common law dargeboten haben. Das allgemeine Konzept der unerlaubten Handlung als solche ist, soweit es den Kontinent anbelangt, eine Schöpfung des mittelalterlichen, namentlich des kanonischen Rechts. Auf der anderen Seite des Kanals geht die unerlaubte Handlung, die man als negligence anzudeuten pflegt, hauptsächlich auf das 19. Jahrhundert zurück, obwohl deren Wurzeln sich schon beträchtlich früher auffinden lassen. In beiden Rechtskreisen handelt es sich um eine Generalisierung schon seit Alters her bestehender Konzepte, die mit der Formulierung der alten Klagen geradewegs in Verbindung stehen. Dieser Prozeß der Generalisierung hat sich aber nicht unbehindert vollzogen. Gerade die Hürden und Schwierigkeiten auf dem Wege zur Generalisierung der alten Klagen und Konzepte bilden das zentrale Thema dieses Buches. Sie werden von voranstehenden Rechtshistorikern aus dem Bereich des deutschen, englischen, französischen, niederländischen und schottischen Rechts erläutert. Der Herausgeber, der schon früher in dieser Reihe einen Band über ungerechtfertigte Bereicherung veröffentlicht hat, ist für die Einführung aus rechtsvergleichender Sicht verantwortlich.