Remedies is the subject of increasing academic interest. It is one of the key organising concepts of the obligations approach to the common law, the pre-eminent approach in law schools, now officially sanctioned by the Law Society. This second edition modernizes the first edition quite considerably. This work determines the place of remedies in contract and tort within the current debate about the reform of the common law obligation.

Health care in the US and elsewhere has been rocked by economic upheaval. Cost-cuts, care-cuts, and confusion abound. Traditional tort and contract law have not kept pace. Physicians are still expected to deliver the same standard of care -- including costly resources - to everyone, regardless whether it is paid for. Health plans can now face litigation for virtually any unfortunate outcome, even those stemming from society's mandate to keep costs down while improving population health. This book cuts through the chaos and offers a clear, persuasive resolution. Part I explains why new economic realities have rendered prevailing malpractice and contract law largely anachronistic. Part II argues that pointing the legal finger of blame blindly or hastily can hinder good medical care. Instead of "whom do we want to hold liable," we should focus first on "who should be doing what, for the best delivery of health care." When things go wrong, each should be liable only for those aspects of care they could and should have controlled. Once a good division of labor is identified, what kind of liability should be imposed depends on what kind of mistake was made. Failures to exercise adequate expertise (knowledge, skill, care effort) should be addressed as torts, while failures to provide promised resources should be resolved under contract. Part III shows that this approach, though novel, fits remarkably well with basic common law doctrines, and can even enlighten ERISA issues. With extensive documentation from current case law, commentary, and empirical literature, the book will also serve as a comprehensive reference for attorneys, law professors, physicians, administrators, bioethicists, and students.

In 1992, an underground explosion at the Westray Mine in Plymouth,
Nova Scotia, killed twenty-six miners. Although the owners of the mine
were charged criminally, no one was convicted, largely because it was
deemed too difficult to determine legal responsibility.
More than a decade after the Westray disaster, the federal
government introduced revisions to the "Criminal Code" aimed at
strengthening corporate criminal liability. Bill C-45, dubbed the
Westray bill, requires employers to ensure a safe workplace and
attributes criminal liability to organizations for seriously injuring
or killing workers and/or the public. Yet, while the federal government
declared the Westray bill an important step, the law has thus far
failed to produce a crackdown on corporate crime.
In "Still Dying for a Living, " Steven Bittle turns a critical
eye on Canada's corporate criminal liability law. Drawing
theoretical inspiration from Foucauldian and neo-Marxist literatures
and interweaving in-depth interviews and parliamentary transcripts,
Bittle reveals how legal, economic, and cultural discourses surrounding
the Westray bill downplayed the seriousness of workplace injury and
death, effectively characterizing these crimes as regrettable but
largely unavoidable accidents. As long as the primary causes of
workplace injury and death are not properly scrutinized, Bittle argues,
workers will continue to die in the pursuit of earning a living.Steven Bittle is an assistant professor in the
Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa.

Does private law punish? This collection answers this complex but compelling question. Lawyers from across the spectrum of the law (contract, tort, restitution) explore exactly how it punishes wrong doing. These leading voices ask whether that punishment is effective and what its societal role might be. Taking the discussion out of the technical and into a broader realms of a wider purpose, it is both compelling and thought-provoking.

This book is a broad and deep inquiry into how contingency fees distort our civil justice system, influence our political system, and endanger democratic governance. Contingency fees are the way personal injury lawyers finance access to the courts for those wrongfully injured. Although the public senses that lawyers manipulate the justice system to serve their own ends, few are aware of the high costs that come with contingency fees. This book sets out to change that, providing a window into the seamy underworld of contingency fees that the bar and the courts not only tolerate but even protect and nurture. Contrary to a broad academic consensus, the book argues that the financial incentives for lawyers to litigate are so inordinately high that they perversely impact our civil justice system and impose other unconscionable costs. It thus presents the intellectual architecture that underpins all tort reform efforts.

The publication of Scholars of Tort Law marks the beginning of a long overdue rebalancing of private law scholarship. Instead of concentrating on judicial decisions and academic commentary only for what that commentary says about judicial decisions, the book explores the contributions of scholars of tort law in their own right. The work of a selection of leading scholars of tort law from across the common law world, ranging from Thomas Cooley (1824-1898) to Patrick Atiyah (1931-2018), is addressed by eminent current scholars in the field. The focus of the contributions is on the nature of the work produced by each of the scholars in question, important influences on their work, and the influence which that work in turn had on thinking about tort law. The process of subjecting tort law scholarship to sustained analysis provides new insights into the intellectual development of tort law and reveals the important role played by scholars in that development. By focusing on the work of influential tort scholars, the book serves to emphasise the importance of legal scholarship to the development of the common law more generally.