The Damages Lottery

The Damages Lottery PDF Author: P.S. Atiyah
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1847314279
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
A man slips on a dance floor and breaks his leg. He recovers damages. A child has both legs amputated as a result of meningitis and is awarded nothing. The law's justification for awarding damages in the first case is that the man's injury was the fault of someone else, while in the second case damages are denied because nobody was at fault. In this searching critique of the present law and practice relating to damages, Professor Patrick Atiyah shows that this system is in fact a lottery. He contends that the public are paying far too much for an unfair and inefficient insurance system and that reform is long overdue. His conclusion is that actions for damages for injuries should be abolished and replaced with a new no-fault road accident scheme, and actions for other injuries should be dealt with by individual or group insurance policies.

Atiyah's Accidents, Compensation and the Law

Atiyah's Accidents, Compensation and the Law PDF Author: Peter Cane
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521689311
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
Since its first publication, Accidents, Compensation and the Law has been recognised as the leading treatment of the law of personal injuries compensation and the social, political and economic issues surrounding it. The seventh edition of this classic work explores recent momentous changes in personal injury law and practice and puts them into broad perspective. Most significantly, it examines developments affecting the financing and conduct of personal injury claiming: the abolition of legal aid for most personal injury claims; the increasing use of conditional fee agreements and after-the-event insurance; the meteoric rise and impending regulation of the claims management industry. Complaints that Britain is a 'compensation culture' suffering an 'insurance crisis' are investigated. New statistics on tort claims are discussed, providing fresh insights into the evolution of the tort system which, despite recent reforms, remains deeply flawed and ripe for radical reform.

Damages and Compensation Culture

Damages and Compensation Culture PDF Author: Eoin Quill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 150990204X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The focus of the essays in this book is on the relationship between compensation culture, social values and tort damages for personal injuries. A central concern of the public and political perception of personal injuries claims is the high cost of tort claims to society, reflected in insurance premiums, often accompanied by an assumption that tort law and practice is flawed and improperly raising such costs. The aims of this collection are to first clarify the relationship between tort damages for personal injuries and the social values that the law seeks to reflect and to balance, then to critically assess tort reforms, including both proposals for reform and actual implemented reforms, in light of how they advance or hinder those values. Reforms of substantive and procedural law in respect of personal injury damages are analysed, with perspectives from England and Wales, Canada, Australia, Ireland and continental Europe. The essays offer valuable insights to anyone interested in the reform of tort law or the tort process in respect of personal injuries.

Understanding Tort Law

Understanding Tort Law PDF Author: Carol Harlow
Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell
ISBN: 9780421878402
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This text offers an overview of the tort system for the non-lawyer or new law undergraduate. This new edition looks at topics such as the theories of tort law, accident compensation and its future, the rise of negligence, and issues in economic loss.

Punitive Damages

Punitive Damages PDF Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226780163
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Over the past two decades, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the number and magnitude of punitive damages verdicts rendered by juries in civil trials. Probably the most extraordinary example is the July 2000 award of $144.8 billion in the Florida class action lawsuit brought against cigarette manufacturers. Or consider two recent verdicts against the auto manufacturer BMW in Alabama. In identical cases, argued in the same court before the same judge, one jury awarded $4 million in punitive damages, while the other awarded no punitive damages at all. In cases involving accidents, civil rights, and the environment, multimillion-dollar punitive awards have been a subject of intense controversy. But how do juries actually make decisions about punitive damages? To find out, the authors-experts in psychology, economics, and the law-present the results of controlled experiments with more than 600 mock juries involving the responses of more than 8,000 jury-eligible citizens. Although juries tended to agree in their moral judgments about the defendant's conduct, they rendered erratic and unpredictable dollar awards. The experiments also showed that instead of moderating juror verdicts, the process of jury deliberation produced a striking "severity shift" toward ever-higher awards. Jurors also tended to ignore instructions from the judges; were influenced by whatever amount the plaintiff happened to request; showed "hindsight bias," believing that what happened should have been foreseen; and penalized corporations that had based their decisions on careful cost-benefit analyses. While judges made many of the same errors, they performed better in some areas, suggesting that judges (or other specialists) may be better equipped than juries to decide punitive damages. Using a wealth of new experimental data, and offering a host of provocative findings, this book documents a wide range of systematic biases in jury behavior. It will be indispensable for anyone interested not only in punitive damages, but also jury behavior, psychology, and how people think about punishment.

The Forensic Lottery

The Forensic Lottery PDF Author: Terence George Ison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accident law
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description


Remedies in Contract and Tort

Remedies in Contract and Tort PDF Author: Donald Harris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521606059
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 692

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Book Description
Remedies is one of the key organizing concepts of the obligations approach to the common law. This second edition modernizes the former 1995 edition quite considerably. It determines the place of remedies in contract and tort within the debate about the reform of the common law obligation.

Scholars of Tort Law

Scholars of Tort Law PDF Author: James Goudkamp
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509910581
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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

Understanding the Law of Obligations

Understanding the Law of Obligations PDF Author: Andrew Burrows
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1847316751
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
NEW in paperback From the Reviews of the hardback edition: This is a fascinating and thought-provoking collection of eight essays..... Taken together they represent a coherent and compelling exposition of the English law of obligations.... One is left with the picture of an [author] ... who remains a devotee of "practical scholarship" and the deductive technique of the common law and has a grasp on its intricacies second to non." Edwin Peel, The Law Quarterly Review, 1999 "[These essays], all concerned with various aspects of contract, tort and unjust enrichment, are a pleasure to peruse, and a distinct cut above the usual lacklustre collection of past triumphs now beyond their sell-by date. Without exception they are both topical and relevant: ... together they form a readable, scholarly and eclectic mixture of exposition and polemic, of speculation and analysis" Andrew Tettenborn, The Cambridge Law Journal, 1999 "..quite simply the most convincing and complete explanation of the law of obligations that is currently available - the book is thorough, compelling, definitive, and highly important." Paul Kearns, Anglo-American Law Review, 1999 "an extremely important work, produced by a leading academic." David Wright, Adelaide Law Review

The Political Economy of Personal Injury Law

The Political Economy of Personal Injury Law PDF Author: Peter Cane
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702236446
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
This is the second volume in the annual McPherson Lecture Series, inaugurated by the University of Queensland TC Beirne Law School, which hosts a celebrated international scholar or legal expert to deliver a series of three lectures. In the first two of these thought-provoking lectures, Peter Cane examines the political and economic significance of personal injury law. In his final lecture, he explores the possible future role of tort law as a way of dealing with the social problem of personal injury. He questions whether tort law should provide compensation for non-monetary harm resulting from personal injury, while acknowledging that it would continue to feature as one element of a mixed regime for dealing with personal injuries comprising a range of diverse regulatory and compensatory arrangements.