Within the time span of 1 month in late 2009, three Federal courts in the USA issued decisions touching on the justiciability of nuisance and other common law tort claims relating to climate change. These cases demonstrate that Massachusetts v. EPA (the US Supreme Court Case involving the question of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) un...

For the past decade, the learned intermediary rule--the rule of tort law that provides that drug manufacturers may satisfy their duty to warn of a drug's dangers by warning the prescribing physician rather than the end user of the drug--has been the subject of vigorous academic debate. That debate has been largely moot, however, as the courts have proven reluctant to make significant inroads on...

In this paper, I will focus on the normative structure of tort law. Only by elucidating point or rationale holding wrongdoer responsible to victim can we understand value having law instead establishing other mechanisms redress, such as a social insurance scheme. Ultimately, argue that interpersonal justice, which underlies law, might not suffice fully justify it in given community. It all depe...

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...

Universi ty of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K. The author would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the British Academy, Arts and Hum anities Research Board. Many of the points made with regard to the law of tort are equally applicable to its civil law equ ivalent, i.e., the law of de lict. The following labels are also used by Kennedy and Grubb. S ee I. Kennedy & A. G rubb , Medic...

The goal of tort law and medical malpractice lawsuits is to restore the situation to its previous state. Namely, the compensation awarded to the victim aspires to return him to the situation before the damage was caused. However, this is not simple, since it is very difficult to measure mental damage or suffering experienced by the victim and to quantify it as financial payment. In tort lawsuit...