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Theories of enterprise liability have, historically, had a significant influence on the development of various aspects of the law of torts. Enterprise liability has impacted upon both statutory and common law rules. Prime examples would include laws on workmen's compensation and products liability. Of late, in a number of jurisdictions, enterprise liability has been a powerful catalyst for change in the employer's responsibilities towards third parties by prompting changes to the law on vicarious liability. The results have been seen most dramatically where the employer's responsibility for the intentional torts of employees is concerned. Recent common law reforms have not been without controversy and have raised difficult and challenging questions about the appropriate scope of an employer's responsibility. In response to this, Douglas Brodie offers a critique of the employer's common law obligations, both in tort and under the law of contract of employment.
The proposed Restatement Third, Torts: General Principles takes the position that there is no general conception of strict liability, only special instances of such liability. This paper argues that there is indeed a general conception of strict liability, namely, enterprise liability, and that enterprise liability is a conception of responsibility for harm done equal to and competitive with the fault principle. Enterprise liability emerges early in the 1900's and expands in influence throughout most of the twentieth century. At the very moment when fault theorists like Ames and Jeremiah Smith were proclaiming the triumph of the fault principle in the common law of torts, enterprise liability burst full-blown on the legal landscape, with the enactment of the first Worker's Compensation Acts. These Acts, as Jeremiah Smith saw, were "founded largely upon a theory inconsistent with the common law of torts." That theory - the theory of enterprise liability - went on to spread throughout the tort law of accidents, reshaping preexisting forms of strict and vicarious liability and blossoming in the products liability regime inaugurated by Section 402A of the Second Restatement. Enterprise liability played an important role in tort accident law throughout the twentieth century, expanding the domain of strict liability relative to negligence and increasing the strictness with which certain doctrines (such as res ipsa loquitur) were interpreted. Even during the current renaissance of negligence liability, enterprise liability continues to exert a powerful subterranean influence on the way negligence doctrine is formulated in such disparate areas as medical malpractice, special relationships and duty. The proposed Restatement, Third's portrayal of strict liability as a set of isolated exceptions to a general regime of fault liability is thus untrue to the history and theory of the tort law of accidents as it has come down to us at the start of this century. More disturbingly, this slighting of enterprise liability and celebration of fault liability covertly contributes to its own realization. By writing enterprise liability out of our law and treating all instances of strict liability as special cases with particular histories and peculiar rationales, the proposed Restatement, Third fosters the triumph of negligence over strict liability, a triumph it purports merely to find.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1951.
In recent years critics have assailed the cost, inefficiency, and unfairness of American tort law, including products liability and medical malpractice. Yet victims of accidental injury who look to the tort system for deserved compensation often find it a formidable obstacle. Those who seek to reform tort law find legislatures, particularly the United States Congress, paralyzed by the clash of powerful special interest groups. Understanding Enterprise Liability sheds new light on the raging tort reform debate by challenging its fundamental assumptions. Offering historical insights and fresh perspectives on the politics and possibilities for sensible reform, Virginia Nolan and Edmund Ursin pragmatically assess alternative routes to a workable, balanced, and equitable system of compensation for personal injury. They offer a specific proposal, based on the precedent of strict products liability that incorporates the insights of no-fault compensation plan scholarship to create an enterprise liability doctrine that should appeal to courts and to tort reformers.
This book is the one place to find unprecedented access to case-law, doctrinal debates and comparative reflections on vicarious liability from across the common law world. The doctrine of vicarious liability, that is strict liability for the torts of others, represents one of the most controversial areas of tort law. Unsurprisingly it is a doctrine that has been discussed in the highest courts of common law jurisdictions. This collection responds to uncertainties as to the operation of vicarious liability in twenty-first century tort law by looking at key common law jurisdictions and asking expert scholars to set out and critically analyse the law, identifying factors influencing change and the extent to which case-law from other common law jurisdictions has been influential. The jurisdictions covered include Canada, England and Wales, Australia, Singapore, Ireland, Hong Kong and New Zealand. In providing critical analysis of this important topic, it will be essential and compelling reading for all scholars of tort law and practitioners working in this field.
The modern corporation has become central to our society. The key feature of the corporation that makes it such an attractive form of human collaboration is its limited liability. This book explores how, by allowing those who form the corporation to limit their downside risk and personal liability to only the amount they invest, there is the opportunity for more risks taken at a lower cost.
In Lister v Hesley Hall [2002] 1 AC 215 the House of Lords reformed the law on vicarious liability, in the context of a claim arising over the intentional infliction of harm, by introducing the close connection test. The immediate catalyst was the desire to facilitate recovery of damages on the part of victims of child abuse. The precise form the revision assumed was derived from two Canadian Supreme Court cases: Bazley v Curry [1999] 174 DLR (4th) 45 and Jacobi v Griffiths [1999] 174 DLR (4th) 7. The Canadian jurisprudence contains a detailed review of the policy factors underpinning the law of vicarious liability and expresses the view that the most significant of these is enterprise liability . This article attempts to establish whether enterprise liability holds the same significance in the UK. And, on the assumption that it does, the article goes on to consider any difficulties that may ensue and any further common law reforms that may result. In particular it considers whether the law on vicarious liability for independent contractors is likely to change.
Where products develop ever more rapidly, the law may face difficulties in responding accordingly to new security threats which may arise. In the field of product liability, an extraordinary need for legal development has thus been perceived, with legislators and judges feeling compelled to find new solutions and to look across borders for these. In the detailed reports in this book, the World Tort Law Society proves that it is in an ideal position to examine the most significant concepts. The report on North America studies the special regime for product liability from its origin in the case law of the US; the European report is centred around the EU Product Liability Directive with its merits and faults; and the influence of these two systems as well as new answers are shown in the reports on Asia, Russia and four key jurisdictions in the rest of the world. Similar questions are discussed worldwide: How can a strict liability regime for products be justified, and can it be justified in all cases? How does the special regime relate to general rules of tort law? Should services be subject to a similar regime? The Members of the Society seek to provoke thought for solutions to these pervasive problems. In this spirit, the volume’s comparative conclusions invite discussion, and the book includes four responses to that call from eminent tort lawyers from different legal backgrounds.
Modern multinational corporate groups of incredible complexity conducting world enterprises through numerous subsidiaries have rendered traditional corporation law archaic. The traditional concept of each corporation as a separate legal unit clashes with modern economic realities and frustrates effective regulation when applied to affiliated corporations collectively conducting a common enterprise. In response, there is emerging a law of corporate groups directed at the enterprise rather than its corporate components. As national legal systems begin to apply enterprise law to multinationals, including their foreign companies, the resulting extraterritorial application of national law inevitably leads to international controversy. Resolution of the problems presented by conflicting national regulation of multinational enterprises presents a major challenge to international law and foreign relations law, as well as to corporation law. This volume is a comprehensive review and analysis of these major legal developments and their economic and political implications. It concludes with a pathbreaking analysis of the jurisprudential implications of the changing corporate personality in enterprise law focusing on economic organization rather than on the conceptualized legal entity of yesterday.