In his landmark 1961 article, Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts, Judge Calabresi provides a theoretical framework for analyzing tort liability as a risk-spreading device that functions in a manner similar to insurance. In our article, we examine the insurance objective of tort liability from the standpoint of modern tort law. Since Calabresi’s foundational article, there h...

The Portuguese Constitution, in article 22, instituted the general principle of tort liability of the State and other public law entities. Consequently, ordinary legislation established the tort liability of the State into the Portuguese Legal Order, by means of Decree-Law 48051, of 1967. This decree, which was criticised extensively, was amended by virtue of Law 67/2007, of 31 December, establ...

one of the evolutions in tort law is the colectivisation of civil liability. in the past, civil liability was collective and the effects of the person guilty haven imposed on the all members of family. then with developing of civilizations and with appearance of principle of personal liability, the collective liability has been changed to personal liability. but nowadays according to the opinio...

strict liability is the result of philosophical ideas of lawyers in front of developments in human knowledge and complexity of social relationships. strict liability the main aim is facilitation of victim's compensation, so the proof of fault is not necessary and causation is sufficient. this type of liability is justified by various foundations of economics, society and morality. in the b...

This paper studies an economic model of tort liability rules and considers litigation between a firm and a consumer, under the assumption that the consumer may not perfectly observe the firm’s action. We compare two alternative tort liability rules: the Negligence rule and strict liability with contributory negligence. We consider the noiseless case as a benchmark, and show that under those two...

No tort reform has more potential to improve the quality of medical care and to reduce the frequency of patient injuries than exclusive hospital enterprise liability. Hospital enterprise liability would make hospitals liable for all patient injuries occurring in the hospital that are the product of provider negligence, regardless of the independent contractor status of the providers. In its “ex...

This article focuses on a specific aspect of liability insurance that arises out of the latent nature of certain insured events. In particular, it is concerned with the fact that in the interval between the original tort and the claim for damages the standard of care applied by the courts may change. This is the problem of retroactive liability. The article begins by briefly reviewing the legal...

This Essay exposes and analyzes a hitherto overlooked cost of tort law: its adverse effect on innovation. Tort liability for negligence, defective products, and medical malpractice is determined by reference to custom. We demonstrate that courts' reliance on custom and conventional technologies as the benchmark of liability chills innovation and distorts its path. Specifically, recourse to cust...

Product liability is one of the fastest growing and most economically significant applications of tort law. Product liability actions against pharmaceutical companies are among the most widely publicized classes of suits in the United States and Europe, prompting pharmaceutical companies to lobby vigorously for tort reform. (Nace et al., 1997). The liability burden on pharmaceutical companies h...

sometimes, following of islamic law, there is a liability of paternal relatives, relatives and public treasury that some of the jurists say that this liability is a against of personal liability and therefore they oppose or limit this liability. but the analysis of this liability shows that this liability is a tort. in the other hand, in some of the countries the vicarious liability is a princi...