Provides an authoritative analytical and practical doctrinal consideration of the law relating to professional immunities in tort law. Dr Davies primarily focuses on English law with some coverage of other common law jurisdictions where cases and other materials are relevant. Professional obligations and liabilities play an important role in tort, with a limited number of professional and occupational groups considered to benefit from some 'immunity' from these. This essential text reviews the nature of immunities and considers the contexts in which the term is used before providing examples of those 'immune' professions with reference to case law and leading secondary commentary. It addresses the rationales and justifications for immunities and, more broadly, their interaction with general professional negligence and liability issues.

Street on Torts provides an insightful and thorough treatment of tort law with a focus on key concepts and clear explanations. Alongside perceptive coverage of the key principles of tort law, succinct case extracts and accompanying analyses allow students to consider the law in context and understand how it is applied in practice. Digital formats and resources: The sixteenth edition is available for students and institutions to purchase in a variety of formats, and is supported by online resources. The e-book offers a mobile experience and convenient access along with functionality tools, navigation features, and links that offer extra learning support: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/ebooks This book is accompanied by "https://learninglink.oup.com/access/witting16e" online resources, including: - Answer guidance for each of the problem questions in the book - An additional chapter on animal torts - Bi-annual updates to keep students up to date on the latest key developments in tort law - Self-test questions on key topics, with feedback, giving students the opportunity to test their learning

Risk and Negligence in Wills, Estates, and Trusts provides essential guidance for all will draftsmen. It offers in-depth analysis of negligence and wills, together with commentary on safe practice and the avoidance of risk. Together the areas covered provide a framework for the safe practice that is now essential in this much disputed area of work. This updated edition examines the new developments in will preparation and what is needed for safe practice as well as the important cases since the last edition. This work contains indispensable practical guidance, tailored to meet the demands of all those involved in wills, trusts, and estates and disputes relating to them. Practical advice in establishing best practice to avoid disputes is given and the appendices include practical forms and checklists to assist this. In addition there is analysis of the allied subjects of estate and trust administration and commonly encountered problem areas. A section also concentrates on duties in relation to taxation aspects of this work. Negligence and private client work is a fast developing area of modern law. The recent financial crisis has helped to focus attention closely on what risk is and how it should be managed. This has not merely been in the financial sector but in all areas of business. The legal profession has seen some major financial failures and an operating climate that is increasingly difficult. The rise in PI claims, the insurers' restrictions on cover, and the increased cost of cover have led to an increased focus on professional ability and risk management. Therefore, knowledge of the risks, what constitutes safe practice, and how to manage risk, are essential for anyone practising in this area.

It is widely acknowledged that insurance has a major impact on the operation of tort and contract law regimes in practice, yet there is little sustained analysis of their interaction. The majority of academic private lawyers have little knowledge of insurance law in its own right, and the amount of discussion directed to insurance in private law theory is disproportionately small in relation to its practical importance. Filling this substantial gap in the literature, this book explores the multiple influences of insurance in the law of obligations, and the nature and impact of insurance law as an inherent and significant aspect of private law. It combines conceptual and doctrinal analysis, informing the theoretical discussion of the nature of private law, including the role of judicial and public purpose, and the place of formalism and of contextualism in normative theories of private law.
Arguing for the wider recognition of the multiple impacts of insurance, the book claims that recognition of the presence of insurance necessarily marks a departure from the two-party framework sometimes described as definitive of private law. The structured exploration and interpretation of the contemporary role of insurance in the law of obligations, and of its implications, illuminates this under-explored area of private law, and equips the reader for further enquiry and debate.

'Because the law of defamation is about reputation and thus necessarily about community and social attitudes, Baker's serious empirical analysis of just those community and social attitudes about defamation and about reputation is a novel and important contribution to the literature on libel and slander. It will be a useful corrective to the various empirically unsupported assertions that dominate the court cases and the academic literature on the topic.' - Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia, US 'This book shines a welcome light on a neglected area of defamation law: how juries and judges determine what it means to say a statement is defamatory. The author employs well-designed empirical research to provide concrete answers, and the reform he proposes is sensible and workable. The book should be must-reading for anyone who seeks to understand how the law does or does not protect reputation - especially lawyers and judges who try libel cases.' - David A. Anderson, University of Texas Law School, US 'When defamation jurors decide whether a statement about someone is ''defamatory'', the question for them to answer is whether it would generate disapproval among ''ordinary reasonable people''. It has generally been assumed that they answer this question correctly. What Roy Baker discovered through empirical research is that this assumption may often be wrong. This fascinating and important book sets out his findings, alongside a broad-ranging and perceptive analysis of the law's approach to defining ''defamatory''.' - Michael Chesterman, The University of New South Wales, Australia The common law determines whether a publication is defamatory by considering how 'ordinary reasonable people' would respond to it. But how does the law work in practice? Who are these 'ordinary reasonable people' and what do they think? This book examines the psychology behind how judges, juries and lawyers decide what is defamatory. Drawing on a thorough examination of case law, as well as extensive empirical research, including surveys involving over 4,000 members of the general public, interviews with judges and legal practitioners and focus groups representing various sections of the community, this book concludes that the law reflects fundamental misperceptions about what people think and how they are influenced by the media. The result is that the law tends to operate so as to unfairly disadvantage publishers, thus contributing to defamation law's infamous 'chilling effect' on free speech. This unique and controversial book will appeal to judges, defamation law practitioners and scholars in various common law jurisdictions, media outlets, academics engaged in researching and teaching torts and media law, as well as those working within the disciplines of media or communications studies and psychology. Anyone concerned with the law's interaction with public opinion, as well as how people interpret the media will find much to interest them in this fascinating study. Contents: 1. Introduction Part I: Asking the Defamation Question 2. Formulating the Test for Defamation 3. Refining the Test 4. Applying the Test Part II: Answering the Defamation Question 5. The Lawyers Answers 6. The Public's Answers 7. The Third-Person Effect 8. Accommodating the Third-Person Effect 9. Conclusion Bibliography Index

The 2012 Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS) deals with some 33,000 applications for compensation each year. It has, since 1964, been one of the principal means by which the state aims to meet victims' expectations following an offence of violence, but it also displays a clear doctrinal effort to differentiate 'deserving' from 'undeserving' victims. Over much of the same period criminal courts and agencies have enjoyed powers to order offenders to pay compensation to their victims, most recently as an element of restorative justice. Split into two parts, Criminal Injuries Compensation is an authoritative analysis of the statutory provisions governing these various remedies. Part One, State Compensation, analyses the Scheme's defining provisions: what constitutes 'a criminal injury', what persons and injuries may be compensated, the rules governing the victim's own conduct and character, the assessment of the award, and the procedures governing applications, appeals and judicial review. Part Two, Offender Compensation, analyses the conditions under which a criminal court may make a compensation order as an element of its sentencing decision, concluding with the potential of restorative justice to deliver offender compensation to victims. The book also touches on the wider political and criminal justice context of compensation. Written and edited by an expert academic and practitioner team, Criminal Injuries Compensation is an essential text for all those with an interest in understanding the statutory, judicial and administrative rules that govern state and offender payment of compensation to victims of violent crime.

Providing a detailed overview of the law of nuisance this book addresses contentious issues such as the distinction between the rule in Rylands v Fletcher and the law of private nuisance; the law that excludes personal injuries from the remit of nuisance, and the relationship between public and private nuisance. The Law of Nuisance also considers statutory nuisance and the extent to which it can be seen to exceed private and public nuisances as well as utility of nuisance as an environmental tort. This book provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of the law of nuisance, drilling down to distinctions between these different types of nuisance as well as examining in detail the overlaps between them.

This pack includesThe Rome II Regulation and a brand new updating supplement which brings the main work up to date and incorporates substantive developments since publication of the book in December 2008.
The main work, The Rome II Regulation: The Law Applicable to Non-Contractual Obligations has become a major reference work to practitioners as it provides the first user-friendly article-by-article commentary to the Regulation. It considers related issues, such as the vires of the "Rome II Regulation" and its relationship to other EC instruments creating or affecting rules of private international law.
The brand new updating supplement updates the main work and draws attention to legislation implementing the Regulation in the United Kingdom, incorporates recent ECJ cases concerning other EC private international law instruments and new decisions of the English courts concerning the pre-Regulation rules of applicable law, and to recent books and journal articles providing further colour to the picture surrounding the Regulation since its adoption in January 2009. It maintains the currency of the main work and is an essential purchase for commercial law practitioners, academics and students with a special interest in cross-border issues.

US tort law, cloaked behind increased judicial review of science, is changing before our eyes yet we cannot see it. While Supreme Court decisions have altered how courts review scientific testimony, the complexity of both science and legal procedures mask the resulting social consequences. Yet these consequences are too important to remain hidden. Mistaken court reviews of scientific evidence can decrease citizen access to the law, decrease incentives for firms to test their products, lower deterrence for harmful products, and decrease the possibility of justice for citizens injured by toxic substances. Even if courts review evidence well, increases in litigation costs and attorney screening of clients can impede access to the law. Newly revised and expanded, Toxic Torts, 2nd edition introduces these issues, reveals the relationships that can deny citizens just restitution for harms suffered, and shows how justice can be improved in toxic tort cases.

Tort law, a fundamental building block of every legal system, features prominently in mass culture and political debates. As this pioneering anthology reveals, tort law is not simply a collection of legal rules and procedures, but a set of cultural responses to the broader problems of risk, injury, assignment of responsibility, compensation, valuation, and obligation.
Examining tort law as a cultural phenomenon and a form of cultural practice, this work makes explicit comparisons of tort law across space and time, looking at the United States, Europe, and Asia in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. It draws on theories and methods from law, sociology, political science, and anthropology to offer a truly interdisciplinary, pathbreaking view. Ultimately, tort law, the authors show, nests within a larger web of relationships and shared discursive conventions that organize social life.

Applying appropriate legal rules to companies with as much consistency and as little consternation as possible remains a challenge for legal systems. One area causing concern is the availability of damages for non-pecuniary loss to companies, a disquiet that is rooted in the very nature of such damages and of companies themselves. In this book, Vanessa Wilcox presents a detailed examination of the extent to which damages for non-pecuniary loss can be properly awarded to companies. The book focusses on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and English law, with a chapter also dedicated to comparative treatment. While the law must be adaptable, Wilcox concludes that considerations of coherency, certainty and ultimately justice dictate that the resulting rules should conform to certain core legal principles. This book lays the foundation for further comparative research into this topic and will be of interest to both the tort law and broader legal community.

US tort law, cloaked behind increased judicial review of science, is changing before our eyes yet we cannot see it. While Supreme Court decisions have altered how courts review scientific testimony, the complexity of both science and legal procedures mask the resulting social consequences. Yet these consequences are too important to remain hidden. Mistaken court reviews of scientific evidence can decrease citizen access to the law, decrease incentives for firms to test their products, lower deterrence for harmful products, and decrease the possibility of justice for citizens injured by toxic substances. Even if courts review evidence well, increases in litigation costs and attorney screening of clients can impede access to the law. Newly revised and expanded, Toxic Torts, 2nd edition introduces these issues, reveals the relationships that can deny citizens just restitution for harms suffered, and shows how justice can be improved in toxic tort cases.

The proposition that the tort of defamation protects reputation has long been axiomatic in the law. The axiom's endurance is surprising: it has long been observed that the law is riddled with inconsistencies and, moreover, the courts and the scholarly literature have rarely discussed exactly what reputation is and how judgments about reputation are made. Reputation and Defamation develops a theory of reputation and uses it to analyse, evaluate and propose a revision of the law. It is the first book to present a comprehensive study of what reputation is, how it functions, and how it is and should be protected under the law. Reputation, it argues, is best understood in terms of the moral judgments a community makes about its members. Viewed in this way it becomes apparent, contrary to the legal orthodoxy, that defamation law did not really aim and function to protect reputation until the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, the modern common law has not paid sufficient attention to either the nature of reputation or the historical relationship between reputation and defamation. Consequently, the tests for what is defamatory do not always protect reputation adequately or appropriately. The 'shun and avoid' and 'ridicule' tests have developed so that a publication may be actionable even where it does not tend to prompt a negative moral judgment of the plaintiff. These tests should be discarded. The principal 'lowering the estimation' test, however, is for the most part appropriately geared to the protection of reputation. Importantly, the scope of legal protection has been limited. Words will only be actionable if they tend to make 'right-thinking' people think the less of the plaintiff. The values of Christian tradition and Victorian moralism which became embedded in the concept of 'the right-thinking person' are problematic in the current era of moral diversity. A revised legal framework is proposed. It retains the principal test but re-thinks how and why different criteria for moral judgment should - or should not - be recognised when courts determine whether an attack on reputation will be actionable as defamation. It is argued that 'the right-thinking person' should be associated with an inclusive liberal premise of equal moral worth and a shared commitment to moral diversity. The proposed framework demands that when courts recognise values at odds with that premise then such recognition must be justified on sound and expressly stated ethical grounds. That demand serves to protect reputation appropriately and effectively in an age of moral diversity.

This discussion of causal uncertainty in tort liability adopts a comparative approach in order to highlight the important normative, epistemological and procedural implications of the various proposed solutions. Occupying a middle ground between the legal perspective and the philosophical views that are at stake when it comes to the resolution of tort law cases in a context of causal uncertainty, the arguments will be of great interest to legal scholars, legal philosophers and advanced tort law students.

Since the financial crisis, one of the key priorities of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) has been individual accountability. This book addresses the regulatory and employment law challenges that arise from the FCA's and PRA's requirements. The expert team of writers examine in depth the provisions of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 which relate to individuals, and the associated requirements of the PRA and FCA. The topics addressed include: The Senior Manager, Certification and Approved Person Regimes Regulatory references and whistleblowing Disciplinary investigations, enforcement and sanctions Notifications, 'Form C', and fitness & propriety Bonus disputes and the Remuneration Code Conduct and Pay in the Financial Services Industry considers the full extent of an individual's employment, from pre-contractual discussions to the post-termination clawback of remuneration. It is a vital reference for lawyers and human resources professionals working within the financial services industry, both in-house and in private practice. It will also be of interest to all academics, regulators and policy-makers involved in this sector.

Many of the defining features of the modern law of tort can be traced to the first half of the twentieth century, but, until now, developments in that period have never received a dedicated historical examination. This book examines both common law and statutory innovations, paying special attention to underlying assumptions about the operation of society, the function of tort law, and the roles of those involved in legal changes. It recovers the legal and social contexts in which some landmark decisions were given (and which puts those decisions in a very different light) and draws attention to significant and suggestive cases that have fallen into neglect. It also explores the theoretical debates of the period about the nature of tort law, and reveals the fascinating patterns of influence and power at work behind statutory initiatives to reform the law.

In The Common Law Inside the Female Body, Anita Bernstein explains why lawyers seeking gender progress from primary legal materials should start with the common law. Despite its reputation for supporting conservatism and inequality, today's common law shares important commitments with feminism, namely in precepts and doctrines that strengthen the freedom of individuals and from there the struggle against the subjugation of women. By re-invigorating both the common law - with a focus on crimes, contracts, torts, and property - and feminist jurisprudence, this highly original work anticipates a vital future for a pair of venerable jurisprudential traditions. It should be read by anyone interested in understanding how the common law delivers an extraordinary degree of liberty and security to all persons - women included.

This new book is the first comprehensive and integrated account of the law on liability for negligent misstatements. Designed as a comprehensive guide for practitioners, it outlines the essential issues that must be considered in determining whether a client will have a cause of action for negligent misstatement. It will also discuss in detail those issues that are likely to prove most contentious. In England, liability for negligent misstatements provides the most important form of tortious redress for financial losses. The examination of this complex law takes place at a number of levels. First, the book attempts to unravel the 'three-stage test' which provides the conceptual framework within which duties of care are analysed in tort. An account of the function of each stage of the test is offered. Second, the book defines what constitutes 'physical damage' and 'pure economic loss' and examines the major ways in which the latter kind of loss arises. Third, the book outlines the elements of liability in physical damage and pure economic loss cases. The treatment of liability by negligent misstatements is completed with a full discussion of breach, causation, and the defences.

Theories of enterprise liability have, historically, had a significant influence on the development of various aspects of the law of torts. Enterprise liability has impacted upon both statutory and common law rules. Prime examples would include laws on workmen's compensation and products liability. Of late, in a number of jurisdictions, enterprise liability has been a powerful catalyst for change in the employer's responsibilities towards third parties by prompting changes to the law on vicarious liability. The results have been seen most dramatically where the employer's responsibility for the intentional torts of employees is concerned. Recent common law reforms have not been without controversy and have raised difficult and challenging questions about the appropriate scope of an employer's responsibility. In response to this, Douglas Brodie offers a critique of the employer's common law obligations, both in tort and under the law of contract of employment.

The past decade has seen major developments in the law regarding personal injury claims which relate to psychiatric injury. The law is complex and in many respects illogical, and claims for damages for psychiatric conditions can be difficult to pursue. Now in its second edition, and substantially rewritten, Napier and Wheat's Recovering Damages for Psychiatric Injury reviews the legal context in which such claims must be framed.
The book concentrates on claims made in negligence and employers' liability, but also examines claims made in contract and in intentional torts. Claims are divided up into the so-called 'shock' cases and non-shock cases, and the author has also included a new chapter on employers' liability with particular focus on 'stress' claims. Two chapters are devoted to the medical aspects of psychiatric injury claims, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The book contains analyses of the main cases which have shaped the present state of the law and examines some options for reform.
The author gives practical advice on how to identify a potential psychiatric injury case, quantum of damages, and procedural steps. This second edition also includes an outline of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. Aimed primarily at legal practitioners, the book will also be of interest to students and members of the medical profession.

This fourth edition of Business Law offers comprehensive and accessible coverage of the key aspects of business law. Established legal topics such as the English legal system, Contract, Consumer, Intellectual Property, Company and Employment Law, and emerging areas such as Health, Safety and Environmental Law are all addressed in the context of business. The work has been thoroughly updated to include all the major recent developments in business law, such as the new EU Trade Secrets Directive and case outcomes decided since the publication of the last edition. The book also discusses the impact of Brexit. In addition, the book features extensive diagrams and tables, revision summaries, reading lists, and clear key case boxes for easy reference. This book is ideal reading for undergraduate law and business studies students, while also applicable to practitioners and those with a more general interest in business law.

This is the first practitioner's work on the new rule (19.III) on Group Litigation Orders under the Civil Procedure Rules. It provides exhaustive analysis of the new rule and relates it to the extensive experience which has been gained in the major multi-party actions of recent years, setting out the key lessons to be learned in terms of how such actions should be managed. Case studies include the Sellafield radiation claims, the Lloyd's litigation, Norplant, the British Coal Vibration White Finger litigation, and other major cases.

Drawing on legal cases, legal debates, and fiction including works by James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Charles Chesnutt, Nan Goodman investigates changing notions of responsibility and agency in nineteenth-century America. By looking at accidents and accident law in the industrializing society, Goodman shows how courts moved away from the doctrine of strict liability to a new notion of liability that emphasized fault and negligence." Shifting the Blame" reveals the pervasive impact of this radically new theory of responsibility in understandings of industrial hazards, in manufacturing dangers, and in the stories that were told and retold about accidents.

In exciting tales of the actions of "good Samaritans" or of sea, steamboat, or railroad accidents, features of risk that might otherwise escape our attention--such as the suddenness of impact, the encounter between strangers, and the debates over blame and responsibility--were reconstructed in a manner that revealed both imagined and actual solutions to one of the most difficult philosophical and social conflicts in the nineteenth-century United States. Through literary and legal stories of accidents, Goodman suggests, we learn a great deal about what Americans thought about blame, injury, and individual responsibility in one of the most formative periods of our history.

Vicarious liability is controversial: a principle of strict liability in an area dominated by fault-based liability. By making an innocent party pay compensation for the torts of another, it can also appear unjust. Yet it is a principle found in all Western legal systems, be they civil law or common law. Despite uncertainty as to its justifications, it is accepted as necessary. In our modern global economy, we are unlikely to understand its meaning and rationale through study of one legal system alone. Using her considerable experience as a comparative tort lawyer, Paula Giliker examines the principle of vicarious liability (or, to a civil lawyer, liability for the acts of others) in England and Wales, Australia, Canada, France and Germany, and with reference to legal systems in countries such as the United States, New Zealand and Spain.