Thousands of lawsuits continue to be filed in federal and state courts each year to seek recovery from manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. These lawsuits include individual actions, actions consolidated into federal multidistrict litigation, multi-plaintiff cases, and class actions. As drug and device litigation remains as active as ever, companies that develop new drugs and devices continue to face significant and often costly product liability litigation in the United States. This new and revised edition of Drug & Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy provides detailed background, discussion, and strategic guidance to those practicing in this field. The book offers lawyers a detailed analysis of the full range of issues involved in drug and device litigation, including pre-litigation counselling, document preservation and discovery, consolidation and mass joinder, multidistrict litigation, class action litigation, admissibility of expert testimony, dispositive and pre-trial motion practice, jury selection, and trial. This second edition not only contains thorough revisions to reflect recent changes in the legal landscape following key court decisions and statutory developments in areas such as preemption, admissibility of expert testimony, the learned intermediary doctrine, and innovator liability, but also contains new analyses of issues such as personal jurisdiction, pre-litigation counselling, and the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It is an indispensable guide to lawyers handling cases in this high-stake, high-profile, and rapidly evolving area.

Little attention has been paid to the development of Australian private law throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Using the law of tort as an example, Mark Lunney argues that Australian contributions to common law development need to be viewed in the context of the British race patriotism that characterised the intellectual and cultural milieu of Australian legal practitioners. Using not only primary legal materials but also newspapers and other secondary sources, he traces Australian developments to what Australian lawyers viewed as British common law. The interaction between formal legal doctrine and the wider Australian contexts in which that doctrine applied provided considerable opportunities for nuanced innovation in both the legal rules themselves and in their application. This book will be of interest to both lawyers and historians keen to see how notions of Australian identity have contributed to the development of an Australian law.

Within the next decade, 100,000 class action Chinese plaintiffs, organized by New York trial lawyers, could sue General Motors, Toyota, General Electric, Mitsubishi, and a host of other blue-chip corporations in a US federal court for abetting China's denial of political rights, for observing China's restrictions on trade unions, and for impairing the Chinese environment. These plaintiffs might claim actual damages of $6 billion and punitive damages of $20 billion. Similar blockbuster cases are already working their way through federal and state court systems. This nightmare scenario could become a reality because of a little-known, one-sentence law enacted in 1789-the Alien Tort Statute (ATS): "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." In this policy analysis, Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Nicholas K. Mitrokostas examine the chilling impact the ATS could have on trade and foreign direct investment. They trace its history from the original intent to recent court interpretations, including a look at class action suits over asbestos and apartheid. They provide an economic picture of the potential scope of ATS litigation, cite the possible collateral damage, and review the impact that ATS rulings could have on global relations. The authors recommend measures Congress should take to limit expansive court interpretations. The study is a must-read for policymakers, international lawyers, and students.

A comprehensive analysis of liability for animals this book covers harm done by dangerous and straying animals including both dangerous and non-dangerous species. Including a separate chapter on special provisions relating to dogs it provides unique guidance from an internationally renowned legal scholar. The book takes account of the decisions of the courts which have applied, interpreted and explained the Animals Act 1971 over the past four decades including the House of Lords decision in Mirvahedy v Henley (2003). Liability for animals which are not members of a dangerous species but which, in the event, may have been proved to be dangerous is a matter of particular interest and concern. The book addresses matters such as harm done by animals in the course of hunting as well as decisions on a number of non-statutory aspects of the law of animals. The book includes the primary material of the Animals Act, 1971 making it a comprehensive point of reference on this subject. An earlier version of this book was published in 1972 just after the Animals Act 1971 came into force. Although the legislation has remained substantially unamended, there has been a steady flow of case law on the meaning and operation of the provisions of the Act.

A footballer dies of dementia, younger than he should A 14-year old-rugby player is told to play on through multiple blows. He never wakes up from the last one A scientist reveals a pattern of brain disease in NFL players and is discredited A survivor of domestic abuse can't remember details when standing up in court This is the story of the degenerative brain disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). This is a story of power, of science and sport, and of the bodies that society deems worth sacrificing. In 2019, Hana Walker-Brown created The Beautiful Brain, an award-winning podcast about West Bromwich Albion hero Jeff Astle and CTE. A Delicate Game explores the passion and fury of sport, truth and justice, violence against women, privilege, love, greed, hope and redemption. It's going to change the way you think about sport forever. For fans of She Said and Bad Blood.

This book looks at the negligence concept of tort law and studies the efficiency issue arising from the determination of negligence. It does so by scrutinizing actual court decisions from three common law jurisdictions - Britain, India and the United States of America. This volume fills a very significant gap, scrutinizing 52 landmark judgments from these three countries, by focussing on the negligent affliction of economic loss determined by common law courts and how these findings relate to the existing theoretical literature. By doing so, it examines the formalization of legal concepts in theory, primarily the question of negligence determination and liability, and their centrality in theories concerning tort law. This book will be very helpful for students, professors and practitioners of law, jurisprudence and legal theory. It will additionally be of use to researchers and academics interested in law and economics, procedure and legal history.

Torts--personal injury law--is a fundamental yet controversial part of our legal system. The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Torts provides a clear and comprehensive account of what tort law is, how it works, what it stands to accomplish, and why it is now much-disputed. Goldberg and Zipursky--two of the world's most prominent tort scholars--carefully analyze leading judicial decisions and prominent tort-related legislation, and place each event into its proper context. Topics covered include products liability, negligence, medical malpractice, intentional torts, defamation and privacy torts, punitive damages, and tort reform.

The law of torts is concerned with the secondary obligations generated by the infringement of primary rights. This work seeks to show that this apparently simple proposition enables us to understand the law of torts as found in the common law.
Using primarily English materials, but drawing heavily upon the law of other common law jurisdictions, Stevens seeks to give an account of the law of torts which relies upon the core material familiar to most students and practitioners with a grasp of the law of torts. This material is drawn together in support of a single argument in a provocative and accessible style, and puts forward a new theoretical model for analyzing the law of torts, providing an overarching framework for radically re-conceiving the subject.

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.

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.

Tort Law: A Modern Perspective is an advanced yet accessible introduction to tort law for lawyers, law students, and others. Reflecting the way tort law is taught today, it explains the cases and legal doctrines commonly found in casebooks using modern ideas about public policy, economics, and philosophy. With an emphasis on policy rationales, Tort Law encourages readers to think critically about the justifications for legal doctrines. Although the topic of torts is specific, the conceptual approach should pay dividends to those who are interested broadly in regulatory policy and the role of law. Incorporating three decades of advancements in tort scholarship, Tort Law is the textbook for modern torts classrooms.

It is an unfortunate feature of the common law conflicts landscape that, for all its sophistication, the relationship between the equitable principles of the forum and the forum's choice of law process remains unclear. This book examines this relationship from the perspective of English law, taking account of the impact of European law. What law applies when litigants invoke the principles of equity of the forum or analogous doctrines in foreign law? This book suggests that there is nothing inherent in the invocation of the forum's equitable jurisdiction or in the nature of equitable discourse that renders the application of the forum's equitable principles inevitable. It then considers whether a different methodology should be adopted for equitable doctrines, and concludes that this should not be the case. Thus, unless the issue involves the application of fundamental public policy, mandatory forum laws or the procedure of the forum, equitable doctrines of any country should be subject to the same choice of law analysis like other principles of substantive law. The book then analyses equitable doctrines within the traditional choice of law categories of property, contracts, torts and restitution in three steps: first, many equitable doctrines may be regarded as substantive and not procedural; secondly, property and obligations issues raised by equitable doctrines may be segregated; and thirdly, by considering the functions of the respective doctrines, equitable obligations may be analysed as contractual (or based on agreement), tortious (or based on wrongs) or restitutionary (or based on unjust enrichment).

Compiled in honour of Bernard Rudden, this is a book of essays in comparative law centering on the contribution which comparative analysis can make to the core subjects of private law, namely property and obligations. The essays are contributed by leading academics from all over the world, all of whom owe an intellectual debt to the honorand.

This classic book by one of America's preeminent legal theorists is concerned with the conflict between the goals of justice and economic efficiency in the allocation of risk, especially risk pertaining to safety.

Millions of Americans rely on the likes of birth control, IVF, and genetic testing to make plans as intimate and farreaching as any over a lifetime. This is no less than the medicine of miracles. It fills empty cradles, frees families from terrible disease, and empowers them to fashion their lives on their own terms. But accidents happen. Pharmacists mix up pills. Lab techs misread tests. Obstetricians tell women their healthy fetuses would be stillborn. Political and economic forces conspire against regulation. And judges throw up their hands when professionals foist parenthood on people who didn't want it, or childlessness on those who did. Failed abortions, switched donors, and lost embryos may be first-world problems. But these aren't innocent lapses or harmless errors. They're wrongs in need of rights. This book lifts the curtain on reproductive negligence, gives voice to the lives it upends, and vindicates the interests that advances in medicine and technology bring to full expression. It charts the legal universe of errors that: (1) deprive pregnancy or parenthood of people who set out to pursue them; (2) impose pregnancy or parenthood on those who tried to avoid these roles; or (3) confound efforts to have a child with or without certain genetic traits. This novel architecture forces citizens and courts to rethink the reproductive controversies of our time, and equips us to meet the new challenges-from womb transplants to gene editing-that lie just over the horizon.

"This important student text deals with all aspects of common law obligations, including the principles of the law of obligations, remedies, negation of liability and specific obligations. The books draws out the common themes that exist between traditional tort and contract courses whilst elements pertaining to the law of restitution are also included.This new edition takes account of statutory developments and new relevant case law since the previous edition and keeps the reader up to date with major changes in the areas of economic loss in negligence and undue influence/economic duress."

This awe-inspiring book is the first of a two volume treatise on the law of non-contractual obligations. The result of a unique attempt to discover the common elements of the law of torts of all the member states of the European Union, it is founded on the belief that the approximation of European laws should not be left to the directives and regulations of Brussels alone. To this end, von Bar has undertaken a thorough, detailed and extensive analysis of the relevant court rulings and academic writings of all the jurisdictions of the European Union to distill a common European law of torts. The insights gained from the comparative analysis also offer a guidance to greater harmonisation in the future. It is destined to become a landmark in the area of comparative law in general, and comparative torts in particular.

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.

This collection of original essays on the theory of tort law brings together a number of the world's leading legal philosophers and tort scholars to examine the vital conjunctions of tort law and philosophy. This is a truly Anglo-American production, with five essays from the leading Oxford scholars and a dozen of the top American, Canadian and Israeli writers.

Throughout much of the history of political philosophy, many of the great philosophers begin their work with an investigation of private law. Why is this? And why is the central focus of our modern concern, the state, examined so late in their works? This book suggests an answer to these and related questions. It reveals that there are two general ways of thinking about the legal and the political: the modern which sees all through the lens of the state, and the traditional which begins with individuals and with the normative relations that exist between them building only slowly towards the community and the state. In the modern view, private law is understood as a method for achieving certain social goals. As such, it can be overlooked by political philosophy. For the traditional view, on the other hand, private law is of central philosophical importance, because it is there that we observe a society's enunciation of its most fundamental political and legal values. Arguing that an understanding of the traditional view is essential to an understanding of private law and political life, this book highlights how the modern conception is seriously distorting in this regard. A story unfolds throughout the chapters: the story of the growth and decline of the traditional view in political and legal thought. It challenges the modern fixation with the state, arguing for a return to the traditional view of legal and political community.

The 'Frontiers of Liability' is the title of a series of high-level seminars held in All Souls College, Oxford during 1993 and 1994. Drawing together top academics, practitioners and judges, these seminars have sought to identify current trends in English law and have provided a forum for experts to give their assessment of how the law will develop in the future. The papers produced for the first four seminars were reproduced in volume 1 of 'Frontiers of Liability'. The next four seminars and the comments made by the distinguished rapporteurs are reproduced in this volume. These essays will be of interest to anyone concerned with international sales, the law of contract, tort and restitution, and equity and trusts.