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How should tort law respond to climate change? In Smith v Fonterra, New Zealand's Supreme Court provided some important answers. This note summarises the decision, and situates it within broader debates about the function of tort law and its necessary evolution in response to climate change. The Supreme Court's decision hints at possibilities for the ‘climatisation’ of tort law, and highlights the double life of tort law as both a backward‐looking mechanism of corrective justice, and a forward‐looking mechanism of risk regulation. As climate‐related harms intensify, the question will be how, rather than if, tort law evolves to meet the challenge. Smith v Fonterra may be one of the first cases to ask that question, but it will not be the last. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we enter into a period of unprecedented climate instability, litigation is becoming an attractive way to hold private entities accountable for their contribution to global warming. In Smith v Fonterra, New Zealand's Supreme Court is considering whether a common law duty to limit emissions should form part of New Zealand's environmental protection framework. This follows the development of several civil liability mechanisms for environmental damage in overseas jurisdictions. This article examines the implementation of civil liability for climate damage in France and the Netherlands, illustrating the difficulties of effectively dealing with climate change, and its destabilising effect on the law. France implements civil liability mostly on the basis of traditional tort rules, which function to severely restrict its scope. Conversely, the Dutch judiciary introduced a due diligence obligation that requires corporate strategies to be sufficiently in line with international obligations regarding emissions. The latter approach carries more promise, demonstrating that for private entities to be held civilly liable for their contribution to climate change, there must be significant departure from traditional legal doctrine, perhaps in the direction of climate due diligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some philosophers think that if someone acts wrongly while falsely believing that her act is permissible, this moral mistake cannot excuse her wrongdoing. And some think that this is because it is morally blameworthy to fail to appreciate the moral significance of non‐moral facts of which one is aware, such that mistakenly believing that one's act is permissible when it is in fact wrong is itself morally blameworthy. Here I challenge the view that it is blameworthy to fail to appreciate the moral significance of non‐moral facts of which one is aware. This view seems okay if we focus on examples of people mistakenly believing that their wrongful acts are permissible. But it is not remotely plausible when we consider other varieties of moral mistake – such as believing that one's action is required when it is in fact supererogatory, believing that one's action is wrong when it is in fact permissible, and believing false things about the moral properties of others' actions and of merely possible actions. The upshot is that those who maintain that moral mistakes cannot excuse are sent back to the drawing board; we need a new explanation of why this would be the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residents living in close proximity to contaminated sites may experience adverse effects from financial losses and property devaluation, leading to poor mental health and physical illnesses—effects that may require compensation. The most common legal process of seeking compensation is the toxic tort—litigation pressed on the basis that contamination has harmed the victims. Several recent toxic tort class actions in Australia brought by residents living in areas affected by contamination from per‐ and poly‐fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exemplify that process. Two such actions, those at Williamtown and Richmond, provide an opportunity to explore how toxic torts currently function as a means to secure compensation, whether they mitigate the harms of the contamination and considering how spatio‐legal manoeuvres may shape the litigation. In this article, we use a legal geography approach to analyse how plaintiffs' bodies, litigants' properties, and the state are constructed and represented by parties involved in these toxic torts. Legal geographers contend that examining the spatio‐legal manoeuvres made via litigation can make visible the effects of legal action on those involved and draw out how the law and its instruments may shape places and communities. Toxic tort class actions have allowed those affected by the contamination to be heard and receive some compensation. However, we argue that they do little to alleviate plaintiffs' concerns about the effects of contamination on their health, properties, and the environment. The findings have significance given that torts will likely play an increasingly prominent role in dealing with such challenges. This article examines a recent series of toxic tort class actions brought by residents living in areas affected by contamination from per‐ and poly‐fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in New South Wales, Australia. It explores in particular how the torts function as a form of compensation for those affected by the contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will focus on the normative structure of tort law. Only by elucidating the point or rationale of holding the wrongdoer responsible to the victim can we understand the value of having tort law instead of establishing other mechanisms of redress, such as a social insurance scheme. Ultimately, I will argue that the value of interpersonal justice, which underlies tort law, might not suffice to fully justify it in a given community. It all depends on whether victims of accidents are able to vindicate their rights against wrongdoers on a regular basis. If social conditions make this unlikely, then the state might be morally required to implement other forms of compensation, either replacing tort law altogether or supplementing it with social insurance in cases where private justice mechanisms tend to fail more dramatically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide time series evidence of tort reform's impact on inputs and quality in the nursing home industry. Between 2000 and 2010, 11 state reforms capped noneconomic damages for health care services. Small chain and unaffiliated nursing homes enjoyed "judgment proof standing" and were less apt to be sued, prior to reform. We find that the managers of such homes were relatively unresponsive to the implementation of state caps on noneconomic damages. Large "deep‐pocketed" chain‐affiliated homes lacked judgment proof standing and implemented greater reductions in their nursing inputs in the aftermath of tort relief. However, we find little evidence of service quality erosion across four measured dimensions of care outcomes. Our findings are consistent with a "defensive care" model in which large chain homes employ unproductive inputs in an effort to meet a negligence standard of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: medical malpractice litigation; tort EN medical malpractice litigation tort 503 506 4 04/07/22 20220501 NES 220501 In this issue of I Anaesthesia i , Oglesby et al. detail the occurrence and financial impact of litigation in UK National Health Service (NHS) anaesthetic practice and identify trends in claim patterns and costs to determine the areas of practice that attract higher levels of litigation and are likely of higher medicolegal risk [1]. This would require clinician assessment of every anaesthesia-related NHS Resolution case to maximise the potential learning from litigation. Initially, most managed the patient claim on a tort model similar to that run by NHS Resolution, compensating patients only on the basis that negligence on the part of the care provider was evident or proven [18]. [Extracted from the article]

The article argues that the fetters on the exercise of unilateral contractual discretionary powers that were defined in Braganza v BP Shipping Ltd and the limits on damages clauses as redefined in Cavendish Square Holding BV v Talal El Makdessi are imposed to prevent the abuse of contractual rights or freedoms and this is suggestive that a broader principle against the abuse of rights might be at work in English contract law. Whilst English law has traditionally been understood as rejecting a free‐standing and general doctrine of abuse of rights, the article explains why this should not be regarded as an obstacle to the proposed analysis. In both the context of contractual discretion and damages clauses, the central importance of abuse is evident from the tests that are applied, the factors that the authorities tell us are relevant to their application and both the high bar for the court to intervene and the flexibility of the relevant standards, which filter out only the most egregious and inadmissible cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: L'auteur recense les arguments avancés dans la littérature sur les liens entre un droit du travail indien prétendument «restrictif» et divers indicateurs économiques et sociaux. Il montre que les indicateurs de la législation utilisés dans le passé pour faire des comparaisons entre États sont entachés d'erreurs et ont été interprétés, à tort, comme des mesures de la flexibilité du marché du travail. Ces analyses présentent aussi des faiblesses sur le plan économétrique et semblent difficiles à répliquer au moyen d'indicateurs corrigés et actualisés. L'auteur fournit également des données témoignant de la dégradation de la situation des travailleurs du secteur manufacturier indien. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law is acknowledged as playing an important role in the growing field of disaster resilience. Still, a detailed inquiry into the possible relationships between law and disaster resilience remains largely absent from the discourse. This paper explores how legal thinking, approaches, and instruments can act as 'tools' in altering the nature and conditions of disaster risks. It looks at how state institutions can wield them and non‐state actors employ them to participate in processes of change. Moving beyond a resilience literature that has tended to focus on law in terms of statutes, regulations, and human rights, this paper examines the ways in which legal reasoning, procedure, and substantive law can be instrumentalised to resist shocks, provoke incremental adjustments, or even foment transformational shifts in underlying risk conditions. It concludes by suggesting that law can offer both a breadth of insights for reconceptualising how power influences resilience and a number of instruments for challenging these power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between law and coercion has been, and still is, a central topic in legal philosophy. Despite this, discussion about it is immersed in confusion. Some philosophers have noticed this, but hardly any work has been done to attempt to solve or even identify the confusions. This paper aims to fill this gap. Here I propose distinctions and qualifications that help us clarify the relationship between law and coercion and avoid confusion. Building on the clarificatory work, I then argue that despite there being several distinct philosophical discussions about the relationship between law and coercion, one of them should be prioritised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Right of Publicity is one of the emerging rights in India which protects individuals from unauthorized use of their name and likeness by others. While some countries like United States recognize the right of publicity and have specific statutory law for the protection of right, on the other hand, India recognizes the right merely through few judicial pronouncements. This article looks into the origin and embryonic development of right of publicity through the jurisprudence evolved by Indian courts. It reviews how the courts' disparate treatment through the privacy doctrine, the IP laws and the tort of passing off has complicated the jurisprudence relating to the right of publicity. In this context, it goes on to critically analyse, first, the legal possibilities through the Indian Intellectual property laws which can be resorted to prevent the unauthorized use of persona, second, some leading case laws which offer guidance on enforceability of the right of publicity. In light of this analysis, the author suggests that in India, right of publicity needs to be detangled from other overlapping rights. It attempts to rationalize the need for an exclusive law addressing the right, instead of any adjustments or alterations to the current legal framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the scope of permissibility where wrong doing takes place which includes instances like Great Britain objecting to provide financial aide to India to reduce poverty since it feels India spends too much on its space research rather than on the poor, wrongful intervention by agents in the war in Iraq led by U.S. and brutal police response towards the non violence struggle led by Indian Independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

The general neglect of tort defences is most significant in defamation actions. This paper attempts to reduce to a few guiding principles the numerous, and apparently unrelated, doctrines recognised as defences by the law of defamation. Defining the cause of action as an injury to the claimant's reputation, it argues that they fall into three classes: (i) defences which exclude unlawfulness because the injury was inflicted in pursuance of a right or liberty of the defendant; (ii) defences which exclude blameworthiness because the defendant was not at fault for causing the injury; (iii) defences which relieve the defendant of liability despite the injury being both non iure and negligent: this group, not being underpinned by recognised principles, deserves particular scrutiny. The rule of repetition should be qualified by recognition of a defence of 'warranted republication'; the remainder should be abolished, being an anachronistic hangover from the old requirement of malice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision in OPO v MLA [2014] EWCA Civ 1277 causes confusion to the rule in Wilkinson v Downton. A strong line of authorities indicates that the defendant must either have an actual intention to cause physical injury or be reckless as to the causing of such harm, the latter being determined by the likelihood of harm being caused by the defendant's act. 'Imputed intention' does not form a separate category of mental state. There was also a missed opportunity to develop a 'justifiability' criterion, by which policy considerations can be taken into account to preclude an application of the tort. This criterion ought to be developed in a principled manner, in line with the existing jurisprudence concerning human rights and with the policy limitations as developed in the context of other torts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the aspect of the wrongful intension related to the concept of harming human. Topics include the views regarding the wrongness of the human act such as the closeness view which deals with the concept of the relationship between the individuals, the casual view which deals with the belief or knowledge of the individual regarding the casual relationship between the intension and the harm, and the aspects of avoiding or rejecting harm.

Tort scholars have in recent years defended a 'traditional' or 'idealist' view of tort law. In the context of negligence this implies that the holder of a duty of care must make an effort not to violate that duty. Idealists contrast this with a 'cynical' view that having a duty of care implies a legal requirement to pay damages for breach of that duty. This article defends the cynical view, arguing that it easily explains doctrines supposedly only explicable from an idealist perspective, and that many aspects of tort law are hard to reconcile with idealism. Empirical constraints often make idealism, even if it were desirable, unattainable, and cynicism is therefore the more honest view. The article argues that idealism is often undesirable, having costs, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary, which are often ignored, and that therefore it is sometimes better if certain torts take place (and are compensated) than if they do not happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to a dominant view, for the negligent defendant to be held liable for the plaintiff's harm the plaintiff must establish first, that the breach was the 'factual cause' of the harm, and second, that the harm is within the 'scope of liability'. On this view, factual causation is purely factual, while scope of liability is normative and non-causal. This article accepts the basic two-step approach, but argues that the distinction is overstated. A close analysis of the principles shows that factual causation may require value judgment, and that scope of liability often involves an assessment of the strength and nature of the causal connection between breach and harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the gist, vitality and practical utility of the tort of intimidation and identifies what count as unlawful threats and as actionable harm. While two versions of the tort have been identified in the past - one involving two parties, one involving three - only the former has survived the decision of the House of Lords in OBG v Allan. In the context considering the tort's practical usefulness, the article exposes as bogus the suggestion that two-party intimidation offers nothing that is not already supplied under the law of contract via the doctrines of anticipatory breach, duress and economic duress. The article concludes with two radical suggestions. First, that two-party intimidation is not a specifically economic tort and secondly, in view of this fact, it was a most inappropriate tool for the House of Lords to have used in their resurrection of the tort of unlawful means conspiracy in Total Network SL v Revenue and Customs Commissioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To assess the potential deterrent effect of nursing home litigation threat on nursing home quality. Data Sources/Study Setting We use a panel dataset of litigation claims and Nursing Home Online Survey Certification and Reporting ( OSCAR) data from 1995 to 2005 in six states: Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Missouri, and Delaware, for a total of 2,245 facilities. Claims data are from Westlaw's Adverse Filings database, a proprietary legal database, on all malpractice, negligence, and personal injury/wrongful death claims filed against nursing facilities. Study Design A lagged 2-year moving average of the county-level number of malpractice claims is used to represent the threat of litigation. We use facility fixed-effects models to examine the relationship between the threat of litigation and nursing home quality. Principal Findings We find significant increases in registered nurse-to-total staffing ratios in response to rising malpractice threat, and a reduction in pressure sores among highly staffed facilities. However, the magnitude of the deterrence effect is small. Conclusions Deterrence in response to the threat of malpractice litigation is unlikely to lead to widespread improvements in nursing home quality. This should be weighed against other benefits and costs of litigation to assess the net benefit of tort reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuroethics and neurolaw are fields of study that involve the interface of neuroscience with clinical and legal decision-making. The past two decades have seen increasing attention being paid to both fields, in large part because of the advances in neuroimaging techniques and improved ability to visualize and measure brain structure and function. Traumatic brain injury (TBI), along with its acute and chronic sequelae, has emerged as a focus of neuroethical issues, such as informed consent for treatment and research, diagnostic and prognostic uncertainties, and the subjectivity of interpretation of data. The law has also more frequently considered TBI in criminal settings for exculpation, mitigation and sentencing purposes and in tort and administrative law for personal injury, disability and worker's compensation cases. This article provides an overview of these topics with an emphasis on the current challenges that the neuroscience of TBI faces in the medicolegal arena. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision of the US Supreme Court in International News Service v Associated Press (1918) has variously been interpreted as recognising a 'quasi-property' right in 'valuable intangibles', such as hot news; as turning on unjust enrichment; or as creating a novel tort of unfair competition by misappropriation. It is suggested that the case is more authentically understood as an incidental result of a process by which the Supreme Court extended the boundaries of tort liability, and the corresponding scope of property protection, in a series of decisions against organised labour. The argument is pursued with reference to the prima facie tort theory of Oliver Wendell Holmes, the American 'labour injunction', and the labour law record of the author of the majority opinion in International News, Justice Mahlon Pitney. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights two contrasting images of tort. The first reflects the traditional portrayal of justice, depicting tort as an independent 'natural' system of rules of universal application forming the foundation of a just society. The second is more recent and relates to the perceived development of a damaging compensation culture. Focusing on personal injury litigation, we show how these portrayals differ from the reality of tort. In practice it is heavily influenced by institutional arrangements: the importance of both welfare provision and liability insurance is highlighted, and the effects of a 'no-win no-fee' claims market are examined. The operation of tort is very much affected by commercial interests and the economic demands of the institutions which surround it. Overall we conclude that the images of tort fail to reflect how the personal injury compensation system actually operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most acute charges against private property observes that ownership generates a trespassory duty of exclusion that far exceeds the requirements of a commitment to values such as freedom and well-being, and accordingly there exists an analytical mismatch between the form of protecting ownership and the functions that this protection may serve. This article develops a novel account of ownership's normativity, maintaining that, apart from the functions it may render to external values, the form of ownership is in itself a source of value, in virtue of the society it may engender between free and equal persons. Any gap between the form and the function of ownership need not plague private ownership, because the functions of ownership do not exhaust the explanation of its good. The formal core of private property is a distinctively social one, even in the most isolated case of trespass to property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship that emerged between injury and indigeneity in a recent residential school lawsuit in Canada. In Blackwater v. Plint (2001, 2003, 2005), several former residential school students sued Canada and the United Church for injuries they sustained as a result of sexual and physical abuse, neglect, and forced assimilation at the Alberni Indian Residential School. The plaintiffs argued that their loss of culture and language was an injury for which Canada and the United Church should be held liable. During the trial these plaintiffs tried to construct an uninjured aboriginality as normative prior to attending the residential school. Church and government lawyers, however, reified aboriginality in a way that made injury the true difference that resides in aboriginal people and something for which the plaintiffs rather than the government or church were to blame. This article shows how the logic of tort law combined with existing assumptions about aboriginal people to facilitate these arguments. Throughout, the article draws attention to the importance of the law and legal processes as sites for the negative construction of aboriginality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most legal scholarship on tort focuses primarily on judicial decisions, but this represents only a limited aspect of tortious liability. The vast majority of decisions concerning tortious liability are made by bureaucrats. Unavoidably then, there are two tiers of justice in tort law. This article focuses on the lower tier - bureaucratic decision-making - arguing that the justice of bureaucratic decisions on tort should be considered on its own terms and not by judicial standards. We develop the notion of bureaucratic justice, applying a normative framework originally set out in relation to public administration. This enables an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of different ways of bureaucratically determining liability claims in tort. The regimes discussed concern the liability of public authorities, but decision makers comprise both state and non-state actors and the bureaucratic justice framework is, in principle, applicable to understand and evaluate the liability of both public and private actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of insurance arrangements on the development of the law of obligations. It is accepted orthodoxy that the existence or otherwise of a duty of care in tort should be determined independently of the parties' underlying insurance arrangements. This article suggests that the traditional analysis is of limited value only, in that it fails to take full account of contractual arrangements which rest upon risk allocation backed by insurance; of the circumstances in which duties of care may arise; and of the relevance of insurance to the determination of the standard of care and causation principles. It is further suggested that insurance has a much greater part to play in the spreading of losses arising out of private suits than has to date been fully appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrine of limited liability, as traditionally understood, prevents shareholders from being held personally liable for corporate wrongs. Several authors have recently argued that the doctrine should be modified to make some or all shareholders individually liable for torts committed by corporations in which they hold shares. This article distinguishes three types of argument that might provide a moral basis for shareholder liability in such cases. I contend that while these arguments support holding at least some shareholders liable for corporate torts, they fail to justify a general regime of unlimited pro rata shareholder liability. The level of control shareholders exercise over a company makes an important difference to their moral duties to compensate victims of corporate wrongdoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the conjoined cases of Sienkiewicz and Willmore, the Supreme Court decided that the exceptional Fairchild approach to the proof of causation in negligence applied where a mesothelioma victim had been negligently exposed to asbestos by one defendant at a level well below unavoidable environmental asbestos exposure. The negligent exposures in both cases materially increased the risk of mesothelioma thereby satisfying the Fairchild test. Whilst reasserting the primacy of the common law as governing the rules of causation in mesothelioma cases, the Supreme Court failed to clarify the scope of the Fairchild exception. Moreover, in an extensive obiter discussion of epidemiological evidence, the Supreme Court has raised more questions than it has answered relating to the role, if any, of scientific evidence in the law of toxic torts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between tort and regulation is dense and complicated. This paper examines diverse approaches to one small element of this relationship: the relationship between regulatory norms and the standard of care in personal injury cases. The lack of clear rules governing that interaction is not surprising: we would never expect the courts to give up the authority (or abdicate the responsibility) to generate private law norms; on the other hand, nor would we expect them to ignore the potential authority and legitimacy of external norms. The strength of external standards is best identified by close scrutiny of the regulation itself. The varying authority of external norms in a private law forum requires engagement with the process by which the external norms were reached. Who and what determined the 'ought' of regulation will provide greater insight into the ways in which it should inform the 'ought' of tort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-standing trial folklore holds that those counties with higher proportions of low-income and minority residents are places where tort plaintiffs are more likely to prevail in establishing the defendant's liability and to recover high damages. Although a handful of empirical legal studies have looked at this question, none have considered the possible role of a community effect of county income inequality. This article tests these propositions with hierarchical linear models of two types of tort trial outcomes-plaintiff success in establishing defendant liability and damage award-using a number of county-level predictors. The results show that no county-level variables measuring jury pool demographic composition or income inequality are associated with the odds of plaintiff success. However, both county poverty rate and income inequality are associated with increased levels of expected damages. The final section of this article offers a substantive theoretical discussion of why we might observe a relationship between community characteristics and tort trial outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the impact of introducing the relationship between torts and sports on students. It states that sports world can offer clear examples to illustrate tort concepts for students. It notes that instructor can determine what topics and examples to cover, even if he is not an avid sports fan. It also provides several examples of sports torts and videos that could relate in the legal studies course.

According to the established orthodoxy, the law of private wrongs—especially common law torts—fails to map onto our moral universe. Four objections in particular have caught the imagination of skeptics about the moral foundations of tort law: They purport to cast doubt over the moral appeal of the duty of care element; they target the seemingly inegalitarian objective standard of care; they object to the morally arbitrary elements of factual causation and harm; and they complain about the unnecessary extension of liability under the guise of the proximate cause element. Analyzing these four prevailing arguments concerning the a-moral (and, with regard to some interpretations, anti-moral) character of tort law, I shall seek to show that the normative structure of tort law can, nonetheless, be reconstructed so as to reflect, to an important extent, our considered judgments about basic moral principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last 20 years has seen a growth in litigation against public participation in Australia and a broadening of the mechanisms used. Following changes to the defamation laws in 2005, commercial torts are increasingly being used against critics and protest groups. Australia's highest profile example, the so-called ‘Gunns 20’ case, brought the problems of such litigation into the public realm and provided a major impetus for law reform. One Australian jurisdiction has now adopted limited anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) legislation and SLAPPs are being raised in the context of national debates over a Human Rights Act. However, comprehensive anti-SLAPP law reform is still some way off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several court cases related to justiciability of nuisance and other common law tort claims concerning climate change in the U.S. These cases include Connecticut v. American Electric Power Co. (AEP), Native Village of Kivalina v. Exxon Mobil Corp. and Comer v. Murphy Oil. It states that the questions surround on the role of court to address disputes related to climate change policy.

Does tort law deter risky behavior in individuals? We explore this question by examining the relationship between tort immunity and volunteering. During the 1980s and 1990s, nearly every state provided some degree of volunteer immunity. Congress followed with the 1997 Volunteer Protection Act. This article analyzes these acts, identifying three motivations for them: the chilling effects of tort liability, limits on liability insurance, and moral concerns. Using data from the Independent Survey's Giving and Volunteering surveys, we then identify a large and positive correlation between immunity and volunteering. We next consider the implications of the findings for tort theory and nonprofit law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a revised conceptual basis for the economic torts which is true to their historical role of regulating the competitive process. Claims that the economic torts are part of a wider principle of prima facie liability for intentional harm or that they are based on a theory of secondary or accessorial liability should, we argue, be rejected. Instead, we focus on a narrower and, we claim, more defensible conception of these torts in terms of the economic interests which they protect, the kinds of interferences which trigger liability, and the nature of the justifications which should be accepted as defences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most people think that breaking a promise is immoral, and that a breach of contract is a kind of broken promise. However, the law does not explicitly recognize the moral context of breach of contract. Using a series of web-based questionnaires, we asked subjects to read breach of contract cases and answer questions about the legal, financial, and moral implications of each case. Our results suggest that people are quite sensitive to the moral dimensions of a breach of contract, especially the perceived intentions of the breacher. In the first study, we framed the motivation for a contractor's breach as either the chance to make more money or the chance to avoid losing money. Subjects were more punitive when the motivation appeared to be greed (breach to gain) than when the motivation appeared to be fear (breach to avoid loss). In the second study, we manipulated the timing of the negotiation over damages, comparing cases in which the promisor asks to negotiate damages before definitively breaching (as in a liquidated damages clause) with cases in which the breach has already occurred. We predicted that once the contract is breached, the moral violation becomes very salient, and we found that subjects were more punitive when setting damages ex post than ex ante. Finally, results from the third study suggest that subjects believe that intentionally breaking a contractual promise is a punishable moral harm in itself. When presented with identical losses, one from an intentional breach of contract and the other from a negligent tort, subjects were more punitive toward the breacher than the negligent tortfeasor. They treated willful breach as an intentional harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comment examines the recent House of Lords decision in Rothwell v Chemical and Insulating Co Ltd. It concludes that despite seeming unsympathetic to claimants, the decision is to be welcomed for the clarity it brings to the tort of negligence by defining the concept of damage more precisely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on a conception of invitational forgiveness. It offers the definition and the propose conditions of invitational forgiveness to an individual. The authors relate the conditions that invitational forgiveness is not recommended and they believe that practices of revenge and retaliation have been employed many times with limited success. It also proves the act of invitational forgiveness as an effective element of peace initiative in the real world.

Conventional wisdom within the medical community suggests that dramatic increases in professional liability insurance premiums cause physicians to relocate or discontinue their practices in high-cost states. We employed a mixed-effects model to investigate the effect of malpractice risk, as measured by insurance premiums and various tort reforms, on the number of obstetrician-gynecologists (OB/GYNs) in the United States between 1992 and 2002. The longitudinal research design examines state-year-level data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We found that the supply of OB/GYNs had no statistically significant association with premiums or tort reforms. Our results suggest that most OB/GYNs do not respond to liability risk by relocating out of state or discontinuing their practice, and that tort reforms such as caps on noneconomic damages do not help states attract and retain high-risk specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enacted caps on malpractice awards and proposed early offer reform address the sometimes excessive verdicts of conventional liability and its very high overhead costs. However, such reforms greatly benefit medical defendants while doing too little for claimants or patients in general. Caps and early offer only affect current claims; far broader reforms are therefore needed to improve the woeful performance of liability as a general promoter of patient safety and injury compensation. Broad reforms, however desirable, seldom surmount high political and practical hurdles. A good, more evenhanded start would seek to make claims resolution faster, more accurate, more predictable, and less expensive, while separately promoting medical quality and safety as well as greater transparency for law, medicine, and insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new answer to an old question. Others have argued that exploitation is wrong because it is coercive, or degrading, or fails to protect the vulnerable. But these answers only work for certain cases; counter-examples are easily found. In this paper I identify a different answer to the question by placing exploitation within the larger family of wrongs to which it belongs. Exploitation is one species of wrongful gain, and exploiters always gain at the expense of others by inflicting relative losses on disadvantaged parties. They do harm to their victims, even when their interactions are mutually advantageous, by failing to benefit the disadvantaged party as fairness requires. This failure is the essential wrong in every case of wrongful exploitation. At the end of the paper I assess how wrong this failure is as a way to gain at another's expense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]