It is said that a nuisance is an interference with the use and enjoyment of land. This definition is typically unhelpful. While a nuisance must fit this account, it is plain that not all such interferences are legal nuisances. Thus, analysis of this area of the law begins with a definition far too broad for its subject matter, forcing the analyst to find more or less arbitrary ways of cutting back on potential liability. Tort law is plagued by this kind of approach. In the law of nuisance, today's preferred method of cutting back is to employ the notion of reasonableness. No one seems to know quite what 'reasonableness' means in this context, however. This is because, in fact, it does not mean anything. The notion is no more than the immediately recognisable symptom of our inadequate comprehension of the law. This book expounds a new understanding of the law of nuisance, an understanding that presents the law in a coherent and systematic fashion. It advances a single, central suggestion: that the law of nuisance is the method that the common law utilises for prioritising property rights so that conflicts between uses of property can be resolved.

Written by a trial lawyer who has had 37 years of practical experience in torts and personal injury law and moving beyond traditional torts textbooks, Tort and Personal Injury Law for the Paralegal covers the topics that help win and lose cases. In addition to the traditional black letter law of torts, the book offers unique chapters on medical and insurance issues-preparing paralegals for the real tasks they are likely to face in today's workplace. This revolutionary book is filled with authentic legal, medical and insurance documents that allow students to learn how documents are constructed and where to find critical information. End-of-chapter assignments and instructor materials simulate a supervising attorney's work requests and help students build skills and create samples for prospective employers.

Tort Law Concepts and Applications, 2e provides the most comprehensive coverage of substantive American tort law available. This edition features two chapters devoted to intentional torts, two chapters devoted to negligence, and references to the latest cases and statutes. To help students develop in-demand paralegal skills, there are extensive end-of-chapter exercises, online video cases, and an entire chapter devoted to tort practice and applications.

Tort Law for Paralegals, Second Edition offers a unique perspective that frames torts within the context of the litigation process. Covering all major torts, it breaks each one down into its essential elements so readers learn what the plaintiff will have to prove to win the case. With this court room focus, the authors explore negligence, business torts, liabilities and intentional torts. Filled with updated cases and laws, this edition includes a new chapter on torts and relationships. Unique in perspective, it encourages students to move beyond just memorization using critical thinking questions and hypothetical scenarios that encourage application.

Over the last two decades public law liability for breach of European Union law has been subject to remarkable developments. This book examines the convergence between its two constituent systems: the damages liability of the EU and that of its Member States for failing to comply with EU rules. Member State liability, based as it is on the Francovich case (1991) and Brasserie du Pecheur and Factortame (1996) judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is well established. But it is yet to be closely scrutinised by reference to the detailed rules on the liability of the European Union. The focus of the book is on the two key legal criteria that are common to both systems, namely the grant of rights to individuals by EU law and the notion of sufficiently serious breach of such rights. The analysis concentrates on developments in the case law of the ECJ and the General Court since the Bergaderm judgment (2000), which consolidated the convergence of the two liability systems that was first indicated in Brasserie du Pecheur and Factortame. These two criteria are set side by side to evaluate the extent, in real terms, of the convergence of Member State and EU institutional damages liability, and to determine the extent to which one has influenced the other. This book shows that although full convergence between the two liability systems is not likely, each stream of case law should look to the other more actively as this important element of EU remedial law develops. Convergence in EU law public liability is supported by developments in adjacent areas, most notably European tort law and European administrative law. This study also illustrates how convergence in the EU liability systems to date has had spill-over effects into national public liability law.

This book defines and explains the operation of the defence of change of position in Anglo-Australian law. It is a widely accepted view that the defence is a modern development, the first express recognition of which can be traced in England to the seminal decision of the House of Lords in Lipkin Gorman (a firm) v Karpnale Ltd. Commentators have accordingly tended to focus on post-Lipkin case law in discussing the defence and its many disputed features. This work takes a different stance, arguing that the defence is best understood by placing it within its broader historical and legal context. It explains that the foundations of the defence can be found in the related doctrines of estoppel by representation, the agent's defence of payment over and the law of rescission. The analysis applies crucial insights from those areas, together with the change of position authorities and broader considerations of policy and principle, to develop a rigorous model of the change of position defence. The work not only provides a clear and exhaustive examination of the defence, but demonstrates that, properly understood, the defence operates in a rational and justifiable manner within its broader private law context. In so doing, its analysis meets the oft-expressed concern than the defence may operate in an unprincipled way or by reference to 'that vague jurisprudence which is sometimes attractively styled "justice as between man and man"'.

"Private law beyond the state" is a topic that is fashionable, important, and widely discussed. Yet it presents so many different aspects and perspectives that it has, so far, remained remarkably poorly understood. Precisely because globalization moves the law "beyond the state", lawyers find themselves forced to rethink private law and its relation to the state. This volume brings together contributions of leading scholars from the United States, Israel and Germany exploring the topic from different perspectives: legal history, law and economics, legal sociology, private international law, and law and anthropology. They aim at clarifying and structuring current debates, focussing on the historical, conceptual, and epistemological relations between private law and the state as well as on their relevance for legal argument; on the actors involved in processes connecting and dividing private law and the state; and on the fundamental normative questions that result from these processes.

This new work adds to the theoretical understanding and discussion of possible solutions to various conceptual and practical problems that arise within the field of medical negligence - an area whose legal treatment is perceived, both in England and Germany, as containing a number of special difficulties and shortcomings. In addition it seeks to make a contribution to the developing field of comparative law, by employing a detailed and closely focused analytical approach in a tightly defined subject area. These twin aims serve to reveal the similarities and differences between two legal cultures in a particularly clear and striking way. The book offers an analysis which is neutral as between the English and German approaches. The issues are dealt with thematically so far as possible, so that the respective treatments in each country of a given matter, eg the standard of care owed by medical practitioners, are discussed side-by-side. The book thus avoids the 'country-report' style, whereby the systems are presented largely separately from each other. What is of particular interest is how, notwithstanding their common starting point in terms of the application of the fault-principle under private law, the detailed rules in the two countries differ markedly. This is true both in the divergent way that claims are structured and argued, and also quite often as regards their substantive outcome. It will be of interest to comparative lawyers, tort and medical lawyers, and practising lawyers working in these areas.

Advancing a bold theory of the relevance of tort law in the fight against human rights abuses, celebrated US law professor George Fletcher here challenges the community of international lawyers to think again about how they can use the Alien Tort Statute. Beginning with an historical analysis Fletcher shows how tort and criminal law originally evolved to deal with similar problems, how tort came to be seen as primarily concerned with negligence and how the Alien Tort Statute has helped establish the importance of tort law in international cases. In a series of cases starting with Filartiga and culminating most recently in Sosa, Fletcher shows how torture cases led to the reawakening of the Alien Tort Statute, changing US law and giving legal practitioners a tool with which to assist victims of torture and other extreme human rights abuses. This leads to an examination of Agent Orange and the possible commission of war crimes in the course of its utilisation, and the theory of liability for aiding and abetting the US military and other military forces when they commit war crimes. The book concludes by looking at the cutting-edge cases in this area, particularly those involving liability for funding terrorism, and the remedies available, particularly the potential offered by the compensation chamber in the International Criminal Court.

In the five decades after the Civil War, the United States witnessed a profusion of legal institutions designed to cope with the nation's exceptionally acute industrial accident crisis. Jurists elaborated the common law of torts. Workingmen's organizations founded a widespread system of cooperative insurance. Leading employers instituted welfare-capitalist accident relief funds. And social reformers advocated compulsory insurance such as workmen's compensation.

John Fabian Witt argues that experiments in accident law at the turn of the twentieth century arose out of competing views of the loose network of ideas and institutions that historians call the ideology of free labor. These experiments a century ago shaped twentieth- and twenty-first-century American accident law; they laid the foundations of the American administrative state; and they occasioned a still hotly contested legal transformation from the principles of free labor to the categories of insurance and risk. In this eclectic moment at the beginnings of the modern state, Witt describes American accident law as a contingent set of institutions that might plausibly have developed along a number of historical paths. In turn, he suggests, the making of American accident law is the story of the equally contingent remaking of our accidental republic.

The collapse of Enron. The prosecution of Arthur Andersen. The bankruptcy of WorldCom. We live in an era defined by corporate greed and malfeasance--one in which unprecedented accounting frauds and failures of compliance run rampant. Allegations against some of the most revered companies in the United States continue to raise disturbing questions about business ethics, good corporate citizenship, and organizational accountability. To calm investor fears, revive perceptions of legitimacy in markets, and demonstrate the resolve of state and federal regulators, a host of reforms, high-profile investigations, and symbolic prosecutions have been conducted. But are they enough?
In this timely work, William S. Laufer argues that even with recent legal reforms--and those about to be enacted--corporate criminal law continues to be ineffective. "Corporate Bodies and Guilty Minds" outlines the many reasons why this is so. Laufer considers the failure of courts and legislatures to fashion liability rules that fairly attribute blame for organizations. He analyzes the games that corporations play to deflect criminal responsibility. And he also demonstrates how the exchange of cooperation for prosecutorial leniency and amnesty belies true law enforcement. But none of these factors, according to Laufer, trumps the fact that there is no single constituency or interest group that strongly and consistently advocates the importance and priority of corporate criminal liability. In the absence of a new standard of corporate liability, the power of regulators to keep corporate abuses in check will remain insufficient.
A necessary corrective to our current climate of graft and greed, "Corporate Bodiesand Guilty Minds "will be essential to policymakers and legal minds alike.

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

A woman terrified by the threats of a jilted suitor is denied police protection. A workman collapses on the job and the employer is slow to help him. A bully in a bar begins to carry out threats of serious injury to a customer, after the bartender's lackadaisical response. Springing from varied areas of human activity, such cases occupy an important area of the legal battleground called modern tort law. They also provide the basis for a fascinating legal analysis by Marshall S. Shapo. Tort law is an important social mediator of events surrounding personal injuries. It impinges on many other areas of the law-those dealing with crime, constitutional protections against government officials and agencies, and property rights. Since litigated tort cases often involve brutal treatment or accidents inflicting severe physical harm, this area of the law generates much emotion and complex legal doctrine. Shapo cuts through the emotion and the complexity to present a view of these problems that is both legally sound and intuitively appealing. His emphasis is on power relationships between private citizens and other individuals, as well as between private persons and governments and officials. He undertakes to define power in a meaningful way as it relates to many tort issues faced by ordinary citizens, and to make this definition precise by constant reference to concrete cases. His particular focus is on an age-old problem in tort law: the question of when a person has a duty to aid another in peril. In analyzing a large number of cases in this category, Shapo develops an analysis that blends considerations of economic efficiency and humanitarian concern. Recognizing that economic considerations are significant in judicial analysis of these cases, he emphasizes elements that go beyond a simple concern with efficiency, especially the ability of one person to control another's actions or exposure to risk. These considerations of power and corresponding dependence provide the basis for Shapo's study of the duties of both private citizens and governments to prevent injury to others. Calling on a broad range of legal precedents, he also refers to social science research dealing with the behavior of bystanders when fellow citizens are under attack. Beyond his application of a power-based analysis to litigation traditionally based in tort doctrine, Shapo offers some speculative suggestions on the possible applicability of his views to several controversial areas of welfare law: medical care, municipal services, and educational standards. This book was written with a view to readership by interested citizens as well as legal scholars, judges, and practicing attorneys.

The Law of Solicitors' Liabilities, previously known as Solicitors' Negligence and Liability, provides a comprehensive guide to all aspects of solicitors' negligence, liability in equity and wasted costs. Written by leading practitioners in the field, it deals with a variety of topics, from general principles to specific situations, providing practical guidance to the procedural aspects of bringing and defending a claim for solicitors' negligence. The new fourth edition includes: - A new chapter on insurance law focusing on a number of key topics which arise, particularly in relation to solicitors' insurance: aggregation; condonation; definition of private legal practice; notification; possibly successor practice rules. - Updated case law to cover all recent Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions, eg Hughes-Holland v BPE (Supreme Court) scope of duty and extent of damages; Redler v AIB (Supreme Court): breach of trust; Lowick Rose v Swynson (Supreme Court): lifting the corporate veil in claims against professionals; Tiuta International v de Villiers (Court of Appeal): lenders' claims, impact of a remortgage on damages; Wellesley v Withers (Court of Appeal): test for remoteness of damage; and E Surv v Goldsmith Williams (Court of Appeal): implied duty on solicitors in lenders' claims. - Regulatory/disciplinary developments, eg revised SRA Code of Conduct.

In Patel v Mirza [2016] UKSC 42, nine justices of the Supreme Court of England and Wales decided in favour of a restitutionary award in response to an unjust enrichment, despite the illegal transaction on which that enrichment was based. Whilst the result was reached unanimously, the reasoning could be said to have divided the Court. Lord Toulson, Lady Hale, Lord Kerr, Lord Wilson, Lord Hodge and Lord Neuberger favoured a discretionary approach, but their mode of reasoning was described as 'revolutionary' by Lord Sumption (at [261]), who outlined in contrast a more rule-based means of dealing with the issue; a method with which Lord Mance and Lord Clarke broadly agreed. The decision is detailed and complex, and its implications for several areas of the law are considerable. Significantly, the reliance principle from Tinsley v Milligan [1994] 1 AC 340 has been discarded, as has the rule in Parkinson v College of Ambulance Ltd [1925] KB 1. Patel v Mirza, therefore, can fairly be described as one of the most important judgments in general private law for a generation, and it can be expected to have ramifications for the application of the illegality doctrine across a wide range of disciplinary areas. Unless there is legislative intervention, which does not seem likely at the present time, Patel v Mirza is set to be of enduring significance. This collection will provide a crucial set of theoretical and practical perspectives on the illegality defence in English private law. All of the authors are well established in their respective fields. The timing of the book means that it will be unusually well placed as the 'go to' work on this subject, for legal practitioners and for scholars.

This book aims to provide a detailed analysis and overview of the duty of care enquiry, drawing on both academic analyses and judicial experience in leading common law systems. A new structure through which duty problems can be analysed is also proposed. It is hoped that the book provides some fresh insights and clarity of the concept to the reader.

This Casebook deals with the horizontal effects of EU law, which is to say its effects on relationships between individuals. To a large extent, these effects have been created by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the basis of the European Treaties. The main focus of the Casebook is on the developments relating to primary EU law and their influence on national private law. It studies instances where EU primary law has already directly or indirectly influenced the case law in the Member States, or where it is expected to do so soon. Compared to the well-known impact of EU directives on private law, these developments concerning primary EU law are hardly noted by private lawyers and perhaps not sufficiently explained by scholars of EU law. Therefore the book makes an important contribution to scholarship and education. This book highlights developments in the areas of competition law, fundamental freedoms, non-discrimination, general principles of EU law, ex officio application of provisions of EU law and implementation of directives, including harmonious interpretation and Francovich liability. In its analysis of the ways in which EU law interacts with private law, the book will be an invaluable resource to students, practitioners and academics of EU private law.

This book examines claims in negligence arising from illegal conduct of the claimant. An array of public policy and other grounds have been advanced for resolving these claims, resulting in an area that is characterised by confusing and contradictory case law. The book analyses the various explanations put forward as the basis for illegality doctrine within a framework of corrective justice theory. Illegality law poses particular challenges for the corrective justice explanation of negligence law, as many illegality tests are based on public policy considerations external to the relationship of the parties. The book argues that the only circumstance where illegality doctrine should be applied to deny a claim is where this is necessary to preserve the coherence of the legal system. It develops the work of Ernest Weinribian corrective justice theorists to explain how the principle of legal coherence fits within the framework of corrective justice theory, and why legal coherence is the only valid conceptual basis for a doctrine of illegality. It also contains a detailed study on the scope of the coherence rationale and the principles that will determine its application.

This is the complete version of the Casebook on Tort Law,part of which was already published in 1998 under the title Tort Law: Scope of Protection. Additional subjects covered in this book include the tort/contract divide, causation, remedies, fault and unlawfulness, liability for others, liability not based on fault as well as defences. It is part of the Casebooks for the Common Law of Europe' series, developed for use throughout Europe and aimed at those who teach, learn or practice law with a comparative or European perspective. Readers will find therein leading cases, legislation and other materials from the legal traditions within Europe, with focus on English, French and German law as the main representatives of those traditions. Materials are chosen and ordered so as to foster comparative study, and complemented with annotations and comparative overviews prepared by a multinational team. The whole Casebook is in English. See the detailed webpage for this book: http://www.casebooks.eu/tort/.

Professional negligence cases are a minefield and clinical negligence cases are no exception. Providing invaluable advice from the leading experts in the field for each stage in a claim for clinical negligence. Full analysis of the relevant governing procedures and principles is provided, plus issues of funding and costs, including complaints procedures and procedures in the Court of Protection, as well as the interplay with human rights and the role of expert witnesses. The Eighth Edition ensures that practitioners maintain a progressive edge by providing useful precedents such as the latest model directions, instructions for experts and draft agendas for experts. It contains a new chapter on product liability and a separate Welsh chapter. It also includes coverage of the more than 250 reported cases concerning clinical negligence since the last edition. This includes: 2 in the Supreme Court 36 in the Court of Appeal - Civil Division 226 in the Queen's Bench Division 20+ in the county courts These cases cover a wide range of subjects from causation and breach of duty through to specifics relating to life expectancy and wrongful birth. An invaluable resource for all those involved in clinical negligence cases including personal injury and medical law solicitors, barristers and the judiciary. Medical doctors and legal advisors in NHS trusts will also find this a helpful guide. "This is a first class book, which provides a scholarly account of clinical negligence law". Journal of Professional Negligence (Review of a previous edition)

According to the United States Public Health Service, over 100,000 deaths a year are attributable to alcohol, including 20,000 highway fatalities. In response, legislatures have enacted various forms of regulation intended both to reduce alcohol consumption and to curb its harmful effects. This groundbreaking study focuses on one such form of regulation, the liability imposed on alcohol servers and social hosts by tort law. Basing their analysis on important new data from their extensive research and in-depth interviews with actors on all sides of the issue, the authors conclude that, despite their relative unpopularity, tort laws are very effective in reducing accidents--even more than criminal sanctions.
Extraordinary in scope and exacting in detail, "Drinkers, Drivers, and Bartenders: Balancing Private Choices and Public Accountability" links alcohol problems, deterrence, and serving practices in a way no other work has been able to do and is certain to become a crucial reference point for researchers and policymakers alike.