Involuntariness in negligence actions

Medical negligence and wrongful birth actions: Australian developments.

Wrongful birth actions aim to compensate litigants who are negligently deprived by health professionals of their right to reproductive choice. Access to safe and legal abortion is integral to the action and wrongful birth claims in the United Kingdom have been facilitated by the Abortion Act 1967 (as amended). The recent Australian case CES v Superclinics (1995) 38 NSWLR 47 shows how judicial c...

Causation, compulsion, and involuntariness.

This article first addresses the persistent confusion between causation and excuse. It demonstrates that causation is not the equivalent of compulsion and that causation per se is not an excusing condition. Then the article examines the conceptual and practical difficulties presented by the excuse that is variously labeled "compulsion," "involuntariness," "volitional problems," "irresistible im...

Professional Negligence

Negligence Actions by Police Officers and Firefighters: A Need for a Professional Rescuers Rule

Intoxication, Recklessness and Negligence

According to what is here called the “Intoxication Recklessness Principle,” a defendant who, thanks to voluntary intoxication, is unaware of a condition of which a reasonable person would have been aware is to be treated as though he were reckless with respect to that condition, rather than negligent. And, according to what is here called the “Intoxication Negligence Principle,” a defendant who...