Category Archives: Torts

Why Reparation?

Sep 5, 2019 Gregory KeatingTorts

Gregory Keating

“Wrongdoers may incur duties to compensate the victims of their wrongs.” This, the opening sentence of Sandy Steel’s Compensation and Continuity, sounds like a truism. Who would deny it? It’s hard to imagine the defendant in a normal tort lawsuit conceding liability but insisting that her concession in no way implied responsibility for repairing that wrongfully inflicted harm. In tort law, the obligation to repair harm tortiously inflicted seems to tumble out of the breach of the primary duty to avoid tortiously wronging someone. Moreover, the continuity here seems both reasonable and rooted in basic morality.

Suppose I am cycling past a grove of peach trees. I stop, sample a peach, and decide to fill my pockets and bag with as many peaches as I can. I take them home and make peach pies out of them. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the peaches weren’t just there for the taking. They were the property of a farmer who was growing them for sale. After reviewing her security tapes and deploying face recognition technology, the farmer shows up at my door demanding compensation. Surely, her demand is justified. I was wrong to have taken the peaches. I committed the tort of conversion, even if my assumption that the peaches were just there for the taking was an innocent mistake. Having baked the peaches into pies I am now unable to return them. So I must compensate the farmer for the peaches. This is what Aristotle called corrective justice and what John Locke called the obligation of reparation. ¹ The obligation of reparation seems to be a basic principle of morality, picked up in the law of torts. Continue reading "Why Reparation?"

Computer Code as Law: A New Frontier?

Aug 5, 2019 Sarah GreenTorts

Sarah Green

As distributed ledger or “blockchain” technology continues to offer decentralised and distributed decision-making, Yeung considers the way in which those automated processes (code as law) are likely to interact with conventional means of governance (code of law). This technology is based on peer-to-peer verification of transactions: it takes various forms, but the common theme is that the record of transactions is shared with all users of a given system, and transactions only make it on to that record after a fierce process of mathematical ratification. As a result, the intermediaries on which transactions have for so long depended, such as banks, clearing houses and property registries, are no longer required. Altruism and self-interest are aligned because all users have a vested interest in the continued integrity and success of the closed system, and third party intervention is neither required nor (for many users, at least in principle), desired.

Distribution and decentralisation are the crucial components of distributed ledger technology, and are the principle features which distinguish them from those forms of electronic payments which use intermediaries and electronic bank money, such as Paypal, WorldPay and BACS, for example. These characteristics also explain why cybercurrencies are often described as “trustless”, meaning that transacting parties need not have any trust for one another in the real world, so long as they trust the payment protocol (which, for reasons which will soon become apparent, they probably should). Decentralisation in this context simply means that everyone who might want to use the currency, and so has a copy of the relevant software, also has a copy of the ledger. The ledger is a record of every transaction made using that currency, and each computer operating the software (known as a node) has a copy of the entire thing: from the beginning (the “Genesis Block”) to today’s latest block. This is where the term Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) comes from: Blockchain, which was created to underpin Bitcoin, was the first distributed ledger, but there are now distributed ledgers of several different forms. Common to every one, however, is the idea that all participants have access to the full history of transactions made using that protocol. This is a novel way of dealing with the ages-old double spend problem. Historically, the challenge of how to prevent double spending has been met in two ways: the first is by using physical tokens, whose corporeal form physically prevents their being spent more than once, and the second is by employing an independent third party, such as a bank, to keep a record of transactions and their effects on the subsequent spending power of the parties involved. Cybercurrencies achieve the same thing by sharing information with every user and by ensuring that the information so shared is perfectly synchronised. This way, “coins” cannot be spent twice because everyone would know that this is what was being attempted, and the consensus necessary for validation and recording would not be reached. Security is thus achieved through complete transparency, and distributed ledgers have no need for any centralised record-keeping, nor for any third party intermediary to verify the integrity of transactions. Continue reading "Computer Code as Law: A New Frontier?"

Recovery for Emotional Distress in Tort

Jul 3, 2019 Sandy SteelTorts

Sandy Steel

In English law, there is no general duty not to cause reasonably foreseeable mental distress, even if the distress-causing conduct is culpable. Indeed, the same is true in respect of psychiatric harm. What, however, is the recoverability of damages for mental distress that occurs as a result of a tortious wrong to the person who suffers the distress? Suppose, for instance, that A negligently damages B’s property with the result that B suffers foreseeable mental distress. Here, B’s claim is not that A owed a duty of care not to cause reasonably foreseeable mental distress by A’s act. It is that B is entitled to damages for loss consequential upon a violation of B’s right that A not negligently damage B’s property. This is the question skilfully examined in Descheemaeker’s article. He explores the extent to which damages are recoverable for emotional harm, defined as “any unpleasant emotional reaction” (P. 603), suffered as a consequence of rights violation. Interestingly, he concludes that the law is largely consistent with a simple principle: damages for consequential (or “parasitic”) emotional harm are, in principle, recoverable, within the usual limits of causation and remoteness, for the violation of any tort law right.

Descheemaeker begins by considering why this simple principle is not generally explicitly recognised by the law. Compare damages for economic loss. It is approaching trite law that damages may be recovered for economic loss that is consequential upon the violation of a right, even if a person’s economic interest does not serve to generate wide-ranging freestanding rights that others not set back that interest. Yet it seems true, as Descheemaeker says, that most (English) tort lawyers would be considerably more doubtful of the proposition that any reasonably foreseeable emotional harm that results from the violation of right is recoverable in damages. Continue reading "Recovery for Emotional Distress in Tort"

Letting Some Light In: Resolving a Key Question Regarding Communication-and-Resolution Programs

May 24, 2019 Nora Freeman EngstromTorts

Nora Freeman Engstrom

Allen Kachalia and ten co-authors’ new piece, entitled Effects of a Communication-and-Resolution Program on Hospitals’ Malpractice Claims and Costs, offers an insight to address one of the most daunting challenges that looms over the field of tort law—and, indeed, one of the most daunting challenges that confronts the “sister professions” of law and medicine more generally. The question is how to address the problem of preventable medical injury. In human terms, the problem is enormous. Roughly 35 million Americans are hospitalized annually, and the best evidence suggests that approximately 1% of those individuals will be victims of bona fide medical malpractice, while perhaps another 1.3% will be “preventably,” though not necessarily negligently, hurt by the care they receive. That adds up to some 800,000 individuals. Further, while many of these injuries are minor or transient, others are serious. Each year, 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die because of medical mistakes, which means that medical errors may cause more deaths per year than all other accident types, combined.

The medical malpractice system—the civil justice system’s attempt to address the above injuries—also takes a significant toll. The system’s direct cost is substantial: Administrative costs alone (in legal fees and insurer overhead) reportedly top $6 billion annually. Its indirect costs are considerable, as an abiding fear of liability reportedly impacts the tests physicians perform, the medication they prescribe, and the referrals they make, which contributes to “defensive medicine” (which is, itself, costly). And, the physicians who are sued are, by all accounts, deeply, and negatively, affected. Continue reading "Letting Some Light In: Resolving a Key Question Regarding Communication-and-Resolution Programs"

Rethinking Tort Liability for Suicides

Apr 25, 2019 Mark GeistfeldTorts

Mark Geistfeld

Suicide has become an important public-health problem, leading Alex Long to revisit the unduly neglected question of whether tort law should recognize wrongful-death actions for cases in which the defendant’s tortious conduct caused the victim to commit suicide. After describing the increasingly worrisome trends—suicide is now the tenth leading cause of death in the country—Long insightfully constructs the historical, religious, and sociological motivations embedded in the tort doctrines, labeled the “suicide rule” by one jurisdiction, that ordinarily bar recovery for suicides. “Tort law’s historical treatment of cases involving suicide represents a combination of society’s traditionally negative views regarding suicide and tort law’s traditional concerns with foreseeability and expanding liability in cases involving emotional injury” (P. 16).

Long identifies “a slight trend among court decisions away from singling out suicide cases for special treatment and toward an analytical framework that more closely follows traditional tort law principles” (P. 6). Long defends this approach, drawing on the principles that courts use to formulate the tort duty in cases of pure emotional distress. “Ordinarily, suicide will be outside the foreseeable scope of the defendant’s negligence” and therefore not subject to liability as per the traditional approach (P. 49). But if the plaintiff can prove “that the negligent conduct is especially likely to result in suicide,” courts should permit recovery for the wrongful death. (Id.) Long correctly diagnoses the problem—tort principles do not justify the suicide rule—although these wrongful-death recoveries will be more common than he concludes. The increased liability is fully justified in my view. Continue reading "Rethinking Tort Liability for Suicides"

Cardozo’s Great Proximate Cause Decision?

Mar 28, 2019 Benjamin C. ZipurskyTorts

Benjamin C. Zipursky

Featuring the memorable phrase “Danger invites rescue,” Cardozo’s opinion in Wagner v. International Railway Co. is engaging and beautifully written. The same can be said of Recovering Wagner v. International Railway Company (hereinafter “Recovering Wagner”)─the recent study of Wagner by Ken Abraham and Ted White (hereinafter “AW”). Through historical research principally into the litigation of the case, they generate an important new interpretation of Wagner. According to AW, Wagner forced Cardozo to confront what lawyers then and now would call a “proximate cause” question. Yet his opinion does not explicitly mention proximate cause (or duty, for that matter). Instead, it employs a notion of relationality of risk. Indeed, AW powerfully argue, the whole point of Wagner is that relationality of risk is far more important than the idea of a “natural and probable” sequence from breach to injury, or any kind of remoteness criterion, in determining whether a defendant should be held responsible in negligence for a plaintiff’s injury. Their larger point is that Wagner can be seen to encapsulate Cardozo’s powerful influence on American negligence law.

Abraham and White’s research confirms that Cardozo’s depiction of the facts in Wagner is largely accurate. I follow their judgment that quoting Cardozo’s account is the best way to re-acquaint readers with the facts of the case:

The defendant operates an electric railway between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. There is a point on its line where an overhead crossing carries its tracks above those of the New York Central and the Erie. A gradual incline upwards over a trestle raises the tracks to a height of twenty-five feet . . . Then comes a turn to the right at about the same angle down the same kind of an incline to grade. Above the trestles, the tracks are laid on ties, unguarded at the ends . . . On the bridge, a narrow footpath runs between the tracks . . . .

Plaintiff [Arthur Wagner] and his cousin Herbert [Wagner] boarded a car at a station near the bottom of one of the trestles . . . The platform was provided with doors, but the conductor did not close them. Moving at from six to eight miles an hour, the car, without slackening, turned the curve. There was a violent lurch, and Herbert Wagner was thrown out, near the point where the trestle changes to a bridge . . . Plaintiff walked along the trestle, a distance of four hundred and forty-five feet, until he arrived at the bridge, where he thought to find his cousin’s body . . . Reaching the bridge, he had found upon a beam his cousin’s hat, but nothing else. About him, there was darkness. He missed his footing, and fell (P. 437). Continue reading "Cardozo’s Great Proximate Cause Decision?"

Can Damage Calculations in Tort Cases be Unconstitutional Because They Discriminate on the Basis of Race? Yes, and Here’s Why.

Feb 20, 2019 Jennifer WrigginsTorts

Jennifer Wriggins

In basic tort damage doctrine, a person injured by a tort can recover lost wages. This means it costs less to harm some people than others. People who earn less, whether because of reduced educational opportunities, racism, geography, family responsibilities, or other factors, will suffer lower damages than people who earn more. Defendants (and insurance companies) will have to pay less to “make them whole.” This aspect of tort damages is in tension with, if not in contradiction to, the notion that—formally—everyone counts equally in torts. This tension rarely gets attention or critique, in part because tort damages are determined individually, usually through informal and private settlements

In one context of U.S. tort law, however, the relationship between damages and inequality is on the surface and subject to critique. When an injured individual lacks an earnings history, race-based statistical tables estimating wages, life expectancy, and work-life expectancy are still routinely used in calculating tort damage awards. African-American plaintiffs, as a result, receive lower damage awards than white plaintiffs in such circumstances. Many people are surprised to hear this practice endures, although scholars have criticized it for decades.¹ Valuing Black Lives is the most detailed explanation yet published as to why the use of race-based tables in calculating tort damages is unconstitutional. It is a companion piece to the authors’ previous article, Torts and Discrimination, earlier reviewed in Jotwell.² Valuing Black Lives is excellent. In this era of resurgent racism, it is also particularly timely. Continue reading "Can Damage Calculations in Tort Cases be Unconstitutional Because They Discriminate on the Basis of Race? Yes, and Here’s Why."

Is Less Really More? Abraham and Kendrick on Getting Rid of Affirmative Duties

Jan 23, 2019 Anthony SebokTorts

Anthony Sebok

When it comes to inherited scholarly categories and taxonomies, a prominent strand of modern American tort scholarship pursues a particular kind of deflationary agenda. The First and Second Restatements divided the law of negligence into sub-rules distinguished by spurious differences (for example, the section on “type of negligent acts” distinguished between “Use of Incompetent or Defective Instrumentalities” and “Want of Preparation”). The Third Restatement combined many rules that could be brought under a more general description – the laundry list of types of negligent acts has been radically pruned, leaving just a handful, such as “negligent failure to warn”.

Because the mission of the Restatement is to organize concepts latent in the common law, it is understandable that subsequent generations of reporters will see common themes between categories that were overlooked by their predecessors (and it is also possible that the law itself might evolve over time towards fewer principles as courts eliminate ad hoc categories). But reducing the number of rules, or principles, in the common law is not an unalloyed good. Debates still rage over whether the Restatement has, for all intents and purposes, removed duty as an element of the prima facie case in negligence in most cases of personal injury or property damage, and if it has, whether that move was salutary. Last year I reviewed for Jotwell an article by Prof. Stephen Sugarman calling for the merger of battery – an intentional tort – into negligence.

And now comes a proposal from Professors Ken Abraham and Leslie Kendrick to merge Chapters 3 and 7 of the Third Restatement, so that, instead of two general categories of duty in connection to physical harm, there will be just one rule of negligence for risk creation and there would be no need for a rule concerning affirmative duties. I will review Abraham and Kendrick’s arguments for the merger, suggest a few criticisms of their arguments, and conclude by evaluating the costs and benefits of pursuing yet another round of doctrinal deflation. Continue reading "Is Less Really More? Abraham and Kendrick on Getting Rid of Affirmative Duties"

You Can’t Spell “America” Without C A R

Dec 11, 2018 John C.P. GoldbergTorts

John C.P. Goldberg

For the past century, the car accident has served as the paradigmatic (über-?) tort. What does this tell us about tort law’s past, present, and future? Nora Freeman Engstrom’s elegant and informative When Cars Crash offers some highly illuminating reflections on this question.

Engstrom starts with the facts. In the U.S., millions of car crashes each year generate upward of 30,000 fatalities and countless injuries. Only heart disease and cancer account for more life-years lost, and the toll is particularly severe for teens and young adults. On the litigation side, many more lawsuits are filed, and more dollars paid out, for car accidents than for any other type of accident. Car wrecks also appear to generate a higher percentage of frivolous or at least overstated claims—think here of the stereotypical “whiplash” plaintiff. Thanks to the presence of settlement formulae established by repeat players, including plaintiffs’ lawyers and insurance adjusters, these suits tend to be resolved quickly and cheaply. When trials happen, they are brief and straightforward. Car accident plaintiffs who go to trial win more than half the time but generally recover modest amounts—$16,000 on average. Continue reading "You Can’t Spell “America” Without C A R"

Personal Data as an Environmental Hazard

Nov 14, 2018 Ronen AvrahamTorts

Ronen Avraham

What was the nature of the harm when data on 143 million Equifax consumers was stolen? More generally, what is the problem with personal data use and misuse by commercial players? The most immediate answer: privacy, individuals’ privacy interests are infringed. But then the question becomes what is the problem with infringing one’s privacy? Here, the answer usually is that infringing one’s privacy infringes upon her autonomy, dignity, emotional wellbeing, and such. To these non-monetary harms, one can add various monetary harms such as monetary losses associated with identity theft and other economic losses. These personal harms have led privacy scholars to focus on the private and personal aspects of data breaches. This, in turn, has naturally also led them to focus on private law solutions, such as tort and contract law-type protections for individual’s privacy interests.

However, despite years of attempting to combat irresponsible data sharing and handling, the problem persists. People treat their private personal information as if they do not much care about it. They may trade it quid pro quo for access to various services from navigation and communication services on their cell phones to participation in social networks, or even just to play Fortnite. And yet, when asked about how important privacy is to them, people overwhelmingly claim it matters a lot. Similarly, when people sue for damages for data breaches, they claim they suffered significant losses. The gap between what people claim (privacy matters) and what they do (sell it cheaply) is the so called “privacy paradox.” How can this paradox be resolved? Continue reading "Personal Data as an Environmental Hazard"