Hormesis and toxic torts: traditional torts and claims for subclinical harm.

Hormesis and toxic torts.

Policy implementation of hormesis has to date focused on regulatory applications. Toxic-tort litigation may provide an alternative policy venue for real-world applications of hormesis. Businesses and government entities, who are sued by individuals claiming to have been injured by exposure to very low levels of toxic substances may defend those cases by deploying hormesis to argue that such exp...

The Future of Emotional Harm

Why should tort law treat claims for emotional harm as a second-class citizen? Judicial skepticism about these claims is long entrenched, justified by an amalgam of perceived problems ranging from proof difficulties for causation and the need to constrain fraudulent claims, to the ubiquity of the injury, and a concern about open-ended liability. To address this jumble of justifications, the law...

Genetics in Toxic Torts, a bibliography

Population-Based Liability Determination, Mass Torts, and the Incentives for Suit, Settlement, and Trial

We explore how the incentives of a plaintiff, when considering filing suit and bargaining over settlement, differ between suits associated with stand-alone torts cases and suits involving mass torts. We contrast ‘‘individual-based liability determination’’ (IBLD), wherein a clear description of the mechanism by which a defendant’s actions translate into a plaintiff’s harm is available, with ‘‘p...

The Future of Toxic Torts: Of Chemophobia, Risk as a Compensable Injury and Hybrid Compensation Systems