This large-scale comparative study analyses the two principal mechanisms employed in modern legal systems to deal with the social problem of occupational illness and injury, namely, employers' liability and workers' compensation. It provides a detailed description of the systems in operation in twelve countries around the world, investigating the complex legal structures and the interaction with other social institutions, as well as their inter-jurisdictional coordination through private international law. Current international trends are identified and assessed and the fundamental political issues highlighted and explored. The study's ultimate goals are not only descriptive but also to answer the question of how compensation and liability systems can best be adapted to meet society's needs in the 21st century. The countries covered are: Australia (Mark Lunney), Austria (Ernst Karner/Felix Kernbichler), Denmark (Vibe Ulfbeck), England and Wales (Richard Lewis), France (Florence G'Sell/Isabelle Veillard), Germany (Raimund Waltermann), Italy (Alessandro P Scarso/Massimo Foglia), Japan (Keizo Yamamoto/Tomohiro Yoshimasa), the Netherlands (Siewert D Lindenbergh), Poland (Domenika Doerre-Nowak), Romania (Christian Alunaru/Lucian Bojin) and the United States of America (Michael D Green/Daniel S Murdock). The book is completed by three concluding essays that address general themes: Thomas Thiede, The European Coordination of Employers' Liability and Workers' Compensation Ken Oliphant, The Changing Landscape of Work Injury Claims: Challenges for Employers' Liability and Workers' Compensation Gerhard Wagner, New Perspectives on Employers' Liability - Basic Policy Issues

This book studies the fundamental conflicts between the protections on the legal rights and interests of victims and the freedom of infringers to act first. It is divided into four parts, the first of which explores the relevant legal methodology in order to provide possible solutions to difficult problems in Chinese tort liability law. Secondly, it puts forward a range of suggestions on how to resolve key issues in China's torts liability law, including the general provisions; the provisions concerning the fault principle; the provisions of the non-fault principle; the special liability relation; damages; and defenses and related issues. Thirdly, the book addresses major institutional issues, including: the theory of consensus force; joint infringements; and operators' duty of care; as well as several key relations: between the right to claim insurance compensation and the right to claim compensation for personal injury; between the right to claim tort liability and the right to exercise property rights; and between the right to claim tort liability and the right to reject unjust enrichment. Further aspects in this section include compensation for death; mental damages; pure economic loss and compensation; punitive compensation; and compensation for road traffic accidents. Lastly, the book explores special issues in tort liability law, e.g. the infringement of media rights, and the specific tort liability in various administrative laws and regulations.

Non-vicarious liability for the acts of third parties is distinguishable from the traditional doctrine of vicarious liability insofar as it relates to a form of primary liability predicated upon the personal fault of the defendant. More conveniently termed 'third party liability', it is a novel category of tortious liability that has evolved from a collection of disparate and isolated judicial decisions setting out, on an entirely ad hoc basis, individualised exceptions to the entrenched common law rules against liability for omissions and liability for the acts of others. As a result of the improvised nature of its development, the current law on third party liability is unstructured, unprincipled and incoherent. The specific purpose of this book is to seek out the foundational principles governing the various existing instances of third party liability, with a view to identifying a coherent legal basis upon which such liability can develop in the future.

This book is about privacy interests in English tort law. Despite the recent recognition of a misuse of private information tort, English law remains underdeveloped. The presence of gaps in the law can be explained, to some extent, by a failure on the part of courts and legal academics to reflect on the meaning of privacy. Through comparative, critical and historical analysis, this book seeks to refine our understanding of privacy by considering our shared experience of it. To this end, the book draws on the work of Norbert Elias and Karl Popper, among others, and compares the English law of privacy with the highly elaborate German law. In doing so, the book reaches the conclusion that an unfortunate consequence of the way English privacy law has developed is that it gives the impression that justice is only for the rich and famous. If English courts are to ensure equalitarian justice, the book argues that they must reflect on the value of privacy and explore the bounds of legal possibility.

The study of the law of tort is generally preoccupied by case law, while the fundamental impact of legislation is often overlooked. At a jurisprudential level there is an unspoken view that legislation is generally piecemeal and at best self-contained and specific; at worst dependent on the whim of political views at a particular time. With a different starting point, this volume seeks to test such notions, illustrating, among other things, the widespread and lasting influence of legislation on the shape and principles of the law of tort; the variety of forms of legislation and the complex nature of political and policy concerns that may lie behind their enactment; the sometimes unexpected consequences of statutory reform; and the integration not only of statutory rules but also of legislative policy into the operation of tort law today. The apparently sharp distinction between judicially created private law principles, and democratically enacted legislative rules and policies, is therefore questioned, and it is argued that to describe the principles of the law of tort without referring to statute is potentially highly misleading. This book shows that legislation is important not only because of the way it varies or replaces case law, but because it also deeply influences the intrinsic character of that law, providing some of its most familiar characteristics. The book provides the first extended interpretation of legislative intervention in the law of tort. Each of the chapters, by leading tort scholars, deals with an aspect of the influence of legislation on the law of tort. While the nature, sources and extent of legislative influence in personal injury law is an essential feature of the collection, other significant areas of tort law are explored, including tort in the context of commercial law, labour law, regulation and the welfare state. Essays on the Compensation Act 2006 and Human Rights Act 1998 bring the current state of the interplay between tort, politics and legislation to the forefront. In all of these contexts, contributors explore the deeper lessons that can be learned about the nature of the law of tort and its changing role and functions over time. Cited with approval in the Singapore Court of Appeal by VK Rajah JA in See Toh Siew Kee vs Ho Ah Lam Ferrocement (Pte) Ltd and others, [2013] SGCA 29

Preventing Medical Malpractice and Compensating Victimised Patients in China is the first book in English on the legal remedies for preventing medical errors and compensating victims of medical malpractice in China from an economic and legal perspective. Specifically, those legal remedies include tort liability, regulation, insurance and social security. The new medical liability regime based on the Tort Liability Law 2009 currently provides the primary legal remedy against medical malpractice. However, the role of alternative regimes in medical quality assurance and victim compensation should not be ignored. This book:- gives a full description of all the current legal remedies for the prevention of medical malpractice and compensation for iatrogenic injuries in China, in order to see how those different legal instruments interact with and impact on one another.- examines how those legal remedies work in practice and what impact they have on society, based on an extensive analysis of court decisions, several semi-structured interviews, and a review of the available empirical literature.- summarises the law and economics studies on medical malpractice and applies economic theories to the legal remedies in China, in order to put forward policy recommendations to China.The ultimate conclusion of this work is that although many aspects of the legal remedies in China are consistent with the economic model of accident law as far as the prevention of medical malpractice is concerned, they still need great improvement when it comes to compensation for iatrogenic injuries.Overall, this book provides a thorough examination and evaluation of the legal remedies for medical malpractice in China, especially taking into account the latest developments in economic theories and new empirical findings. Hence, it will be of interest to legal and economic scholars, students, lawyers, insurers and policy makers responsible for ensuring the quality of medical care.

"A well-documented and eminently readable examination of the tort reform debate in the United States."
-- "The Advocate"

"A compendium of defenses against decades of tort reform misinformation and disinformation, this monograph will best serve undergraduates as a library reference."
-- "The Law and Politics Book Review"

"This book is an important addition to the growing body of works . . . that consumer advocates and attorneys can use to defend the civil justice system in the legislatures, in courtrooms, and in the court of public opinion."
--"Trial Magazine"

Late night comedians and journalists eagerly seized upon the case of an elderly woman who sued McDonald's when she spilled hot coffee in her lap as a prime example of frivolous litigation. But as Rustad and Koenig argue, cases such as these are an incomplete and misleading characterization of tort law. Corporations have successfully waged a public relations battle to create the impression that most lawsuits are spurious, when in fact the opposite is true: tort law plays a crucial role in protecting consumers from dangerous and sometimes life-threatening hazards. Without legal remedies, corporations would suffer no penalty for choosing profits over public health and safely.

In Defense of Tort Law is the first book to systematically examine the social, legal and policy dimensions of the tort reform debate. This insightful analysis of solid empirical data looks beyond popular myths about frivolous lawsuits, and tackles a variety of contentious issues: Should punitive damages be capped? Who is favored by tort law? Who loses, and why?

Koenig and Rustad's detailed case study analysis also reveals disturbing genderinequities in a legal system that is largely dominated by men. Because women are disproportionately injured by medical products, impermissible HMO cost cutting, medical malpractice and sexual exploitation, restrictions on the rights to recovery in these fields inevitably creates gender injustice. Engaging and up to date, In Defense of Tort Law also identifies aspects of the current law that require further elaboration, including the need for measures to combat cybercrime against consumers.

'Restitution for wrongs', or 'restitutionary damages', is the judicial award which compels the wrongdoer to give up to the victim the benefit obtained through the perpetration of the wrong, independently of any loss suffered by the victim. The establishment of a civil trial in Roman law, which left compensation as the main response, and a widespread, loss-centred interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of corrective justice explain, but do not justify the difficulties encountered by modern attempts to account for restitutionary damages. Mistakes in the classification of this institution have complicated the picture. To overcome some of these problems, this study considers the basic structure of restitutionary damages from different angles. In part one, the topic is analysed from a comparative perspective. Although the focus remains on English law, the German, the Italian and the Roman jurisdictions provide research data which, in part two, support the development of a theory of restitution for wrongs as corrective justice.

This work contains the proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Dutch-Japanese Law, which took place at the University of Utrecht in August 1996. The doctrine of tort law was chosen as the central theme for this conference. The meaning of tort law has been extended to such a degree that socially accepted responsibilities are attributed to specifically determined natural and legal persons. This book elaborates on various trends in tort law, such as medical liability, traffic liability, product liability, and environmental liability. A comparison with the Japanese legal system provides interesting insights into this particular issue, because the Japanese system is of a dualistic nature. By studying the development of the law in both Japan and the Netherlands, existing links are strengthened and new contacts between Dutch and Japanese academic lawyers are established.

The development of private law across the common law world is typically portrayed as a series of incremental steps, each one delivered as a result of judges dealing with marginally different factual circumstances presented to them for determination. This is said to be the common law method. According to this process, change might be assumed to be gradual, almost imperceptible. If this were true, however, then even Darwinian-style evolution - which is subject to major change-inducing pressures, such as the death of the dinosaurs - would seem unlikely in the law, and radical and revolutionary paradigms shifts perhaps impossible. And yet the history of the common law is to the contrary. The legal landscape is littered with quite remarkable revolutionary and evolutionary changes in the shape of the common law. The essays in this volume explore some of the highlights in this fascinating revolutionary and evolutionary development of private law. The contributors expose the nature of the changes undergone and their significance for the future direction of travel. They identify the circumstances and the contexts which might have provided an impetus for these significant changes. The essays range across all areas of private law, including contract, tort, unjust enrichment and property. No area has been immune from development. That fact itself is unsurprising, but an extended examination of the particular circumstances and contexts which delivered some of private law's most important developments has its own special significance for what it might indicate about the shape, and the shaping, of private law regimes in the future.

The goal of this study is to provide a general overview and thorough analysis of how the European Court of Human Rights deals with tort law issues such as damage, causation, wrongfulness and fault, the protective purpose of rules, remedies and the reduction of damages when applying art 41 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These issues have been examined on the basis of a comprehensive selection and detailed analysis of the Court's judgments and the results compared with different European legal systems (Austria, Belgium, England and Wales, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Romania, Scandinavia, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey), EC Tort Law and the Principles of European Tort Law. The introduction of art 41 (ex art 50) ECHR in 1950 as a compromise and the issues it raises now, the methodological approaches to the tort law of the ECHR, the perspectives of human rights and tort law and public international law as well as the question of whether the reparation awarded to victims of ECHR violations can be considered real 'just' satisfaction are addressed in five special reports (two of which are also available in German). Concluding remarks try to summarise the outcome.

Causal uncertainty is a wide-spread phenomenon. Courts are often unable to determine whether a defendant's tortious conduct was a factual cause of a plaintiff's harm. Yet, sometimes courts can determine the probability that the defendant caused the plaintiff's harm, although often there is considerable variance in the probability estimate based on the available evidence. The conventional way to cope with this uncertainty has been to apply the evidentiary rule of 'standard of proof'. The application of this 'all or nothing' rule can lead to unfairness by absolving defendants who acted tortiously and may also create undesirable incentives that result in greater wrongful conduct and injustice to victims. Some courts have decided that this 'no-liability' outcome is undesirable. They have adopted rules of proportional liability that compensate plaintiffs according to the probability that their harm was caused by the defendant's tortious conduct. In 2005 the Principles of European Tort Law (PETL) made a breakthrough in this regard by embracing rules of proportional liability. This project, building on PETL, endeavours to make further inquiries into the desirable scope of proportional liability and to offer a more detailed view of its meaning, implications, and ramifications.

This comprehensive new volume on psychology and the law is an essential reference for students and professionals. It offers the most up-to-date information on issues such as malpractive, confidentiality, jury selection, punishment, competency, and the right to refuse treatment. Two well-known professionals, a lawyer and a clinical psychologist, have teamed up to write this judiciously balanced, clearly presented, and accessible guide to an ever more complex subject. they answer such questions as: What does a lie detector test really tell you? Can law enforcement officials use hypnosis to investigate a crime? Is eyewitness testimony the most reliable and persuasive evidence? Are we living in a more punitive society? These and other issues are dealt with in a concise, readable manner, one that tells readers how to approach the problems with arise in day-today practive as well as how to think about the fundamental current ethical and legal issues. Meticulously researched and documented, this important new volume offers a lively presentation, one which is must reading for students of law, and for professionals in both fields who want a complete reference guide.

The American Way is incompatible with the U.S. experience of post-World War II capitalism. National and individual self-determination are collapsing in the face of profit-seeking, social compulsions, and the imperatives of global competition. Iain Hay states that the illusion of free choice and the misguided rhetoric of individualism remain: they mask new realities of compulsion and collectivism. This cultural contradiction is thoroughly analyzed by Hay from an unusual, outside perspective through an investigation of the development of medical liability insurance and its implications for tort law reform and health care provision in the United States.

"Money, Medicine, and Malpractice in American Society" transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries to provide a straightforward account of circumstances giving rise to particular forms of legal, medical, and social regulation in the United States. Hay explores the roots of change in medical and legal regulation in the United States through an inquiry into medical malpractice and health care costs in the ever-changing domestic and worldwide arena. It provides the first comprehensive association of American medical liability issues, health care spending, and post-War national and international contexts. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and doctors as it provides a useful framework for understanding legal and medical change associated with medical liability and its insurance.

The legal and commercial importance of the tort of Conversion is difficult to overstate, and yet there remains a sense that the principles of the tort are elusive. Most recently, this was illustrated by the difficulties posed for the House of Lords by the Conversion issue in OBG v Allan [2007] UKHL 21, on which it was closely divided. Conversion, as we now recognise it, has a complex pedigree. Showing little regard for received taxonomies, it has elements which make lawyers think in terms of property, despite its eventful descent from actions in personam. Conversion is, therefore, something of a hybrid creature, which perhaps explains the paucity of scholarly analysis of the subject to date, property lawyers and tort lawyers each regarding it as the other's concern. This book is the first comprehensive appraisal of the modern tort of Conversion. It offers a coherent and accessible rationalisation of the subject, supported by rigorous analysis of all aspects, from title to sue to the available remedies. The principal thesis of the work is that the development of Conversion has somewhat stagnated, and in consequence the tort has so far been unable to fulfil either its theoretical or its practical potential as a legal device. Whilst this is partly a result of historical factors, it is also a consequence of the fact that no systematic examination of the tort in England appears ever to have been carried out. The primary objectives of the book, therefore, are to provide such an analysis, to present Conversion as a useful and important tort, well suited to the demands of contemporary law and commerce, and to offer a principled framework for its future development.

in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the legal aspects of mass torts in Europe. Both academics, legislatures, courts and policymakers throughout the whole of Europe have been struggling with the challenges that such 'massification' of private law relationships poses both in and outside of tort law. The subject moves between the law of civil procedure, substantive tort law, access to justice debates and regulatory frameworks for mass disputes. This volume offers both a caleidoscopic review of real-life key cases of mass tort and an in-depth reflection on the broader implications of mass tort in Europe. Thus, the challenges posed by mass torts are explored, mapped and analysed.

Winner of the 2010 T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award Cowboys are an American legend, but despite their ubiquity in history and popular culture, misperceptions abound. Jacqueline M. Moore casts aside romantic and one-dimensional images of cowboys by analyzing the class, gender, and labor histories of ranching in Texas during the second half of the nineteenth century. As working-class men, cowboys showed their masculinity through their skills at work as well as public displays in town. But what cowboys thought was manly behavior did not always match those ideas of the business-minded cattlemen, who largely absorbed middle-class masculine ideals of restraint. Moore explores how, in contrast to the mythic image, from the late 1870s on, as the Texas frontier became more settled and the open range disappeared, the real cowboys faced increasing demands from the people around them to rein in the very traits that Americans considered the most masculine. Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.

This book provides a comprehensive theory of the rights upon which tort law is based and the liability that flows from violating those rights. Inspired by the account of private law contained in Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, the book shows that Kant's theory elucidates a conception of interpersonal wrongdoing that illuminates the operation of tort law. The book then utilises this conception, applying it to the various areas of tort law, in order to develop an understanding of the particular areas in question and, just as importantly, their relationship to each other. It argues that there are three general kinds of liability found in the law of tort: liability for putting another or another's property to one's purposes directly, liability for doing something to a third party that puts another or another's property to one's purposes, and liability for pursuing purposes in a way that improperly interferes with the ability of another to pursue her legitimate purposes. It terms these forms liability for direct control, liability for indirect control and liability for injury respectively. The result is a coherent, philosophical understanding of the structure of tort liability as an entire system. In developing its position, the book considers the laws of Australia, Canada, England and Wales, New Zealand and the United States.

* Bridges the disciplines of litigation and neuropsychology in a modern UK context. * Conveys the complexity and huge amount of research data into an accessible medicolegal based neuropsychology text with relevance for both lawyers and psychologists. * A scientifically oriented exploration based on real-life case examples

Feminist Perspectives on Tort Law offers a distinctly feminist approach to key topics in tort law. Ten original essays written by feminist legal scholars from the UK, US, Canada and Australia encompass a range of ways of thinking about women, tort law and feminism. The collection provides a fresh and original analysis of issues of long-standing concern to feminists as well as nascent areas of concern. These include conceptions of harm, constructions of reasonableness, the duty of care, the public/private divide, sexual wrongdoing, privacy and environmental law. Written with both scholars and students in mind, Feminist Perspectives on Tort Law is an important and timely addition to key debates in tort law..

Blueprints provide a unique plan for studying the law, giving a visual overview of the vital building blocks of each topic and the various outside influences that come together in the study of law. This series enables the reader to place everything within memorable context and is useful in providing an overview of the law. Each text offers a clear understanding of legal study and an engaging introduction to each subject; presenting the study of law as both an academic subject and a force in society. The texts map to undergraduate law degree programmes and are tailored for use harmoniously alongside core law material.

I. OVERVIEW Legal Issues in Mental HeaIth Care is aimed at the mental health clinician who provides services on either an inpatient or an outpatient basis. It is written for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and other therapists to help them understand and manage legal issues in their daily practice. The issues covered apply to therapists who work for an agency or hospital as weil as those who work independently. The book is meant to serve as a handbook, but it also provides a quick resource as legal questions arise which are related to the obligations of the therapist. It ad dresses the legal issues that confront the clinician. It is not aimed at the clinicianwho specializes in forensie mental health issues, because the information provided does not reach that level of detail or sophistication. Nor is it aimed at the scholar, because our goal is to provide practical information in a clear and concise format. Wehave not addressed the wide array of laws protecting the mentally disabled from discrirnina tion-most notably, the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)and the Fair Housing Act. Most states also have laws that prohibit discrimination in employment, services, and housing. These issues are beyond the scope of this book because we are address ing the legal issues that arise in providing care, rather than the rights of mentally disabled persons. 11. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK The book consists of eleven chapters and a Glossary of Legal Terms."