Strict Liability Versus Negligence

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Vaia Karapanou
Keyword(s):  
2000 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald R. King ◽  
Rachel Schwartz

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to investigate how legal regimes affect social welfare. We investigate four legal regimes, each consisting of a liability rule (strict or negligence) and a damage measure (out-of-pocket or independent-of-investment). The results of the experiment are for the most part consistent with the qualitative predictions of Schwartz's (1997) model; however, subjects' actual choices deviate from the point predictions of the model. We explore whether these deviations arise because: (1) subjects form faulty anticipations of their counterparts' actions and/or (2) subjects do not choose the optimal responses given their anticipations. We find that subjects behave differently under the four regimes in terms of anticipation errors and departures from best responses. For example, subjects playing the role of auditors anticipate investments most accurately under the regime with strict liability combined with out-of-pocket damages, but are least likely to choose the optimal response given their anticipations. This finding implies that noneconomic factors likely play a role in determining subjects' choices.


Author(s):  
John Gardner

Torts and Other Wrongs is a collection of eleven of the author’s essays on the theory of the law of torts and its place in the law more generally. Two new essays accompany nine previously published pieces, a number of which are already established classics of theoretical writing on private law. Together they range across the distinction between torts and other wrongs, the moral significance of outcomes, the nature and role of corrective and distributive justice, the justification of strict liability, the nature of the reasonable person standard, and the role of public policy in private law adjudication. Though focused on the law of torts, the wide-ranging analysis in each chapter will speak to theorists of private law more generally.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-246
Author(s):  
David Messner

Abstract In European private law, operators of industrial facilities, power plants and other sites using special substances or procedures are made responsible for harm caused by pollution even where it is doubtful that such harmdoing is unreasonable or could have been foreseen. Analysing both fault-based and strict liability, the author discusses legal bases for this liability and its justification in European jurisdictions.


2005 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Pardy

The precautionary principle, developed in international environmental law, is a prospective concept. It can be used to decide what should be allowed to occur in the future. The question addressed in this article is whether, in domestic law, the precautionary principle should be applied retrospectively. Should precautionary behaviour be used as a standard to apply to the past actions of private persons, so as to judge whether those persons have acted legally ? In the civil realm, the answer is « yes ». Applying the precautionary principle in civil cases removes foreseeability requirements, and transforms liability based on fault into strict liability. In the criminal sphere, retrospective application of the precautionary principle is not appropriate. To require precautionary action on the part of an accused in an environmental prosecution transforms strict liability into absolute liability, and creates the potential for criminal punishment in the absence of culpability.


Legal Theory ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Peter Jaffey

Private law is generally formulated in terms of right–duty relations, and accordingly, private-law claims are understood to arise from breaches of duty, or wrongs. Some claims are not easy to explain on this basis because the claim arises from an act that the defendant was justified in doing. The violation/infringement distinction seems to offer an explanation of such claims, but it is argued that the explanation is illusory. Claims of this sort are best understood as based not on a primary right–duty relation at all but on a “primary liability” or “right–liability” relation. A primary-liability claim is not a claim arising from the breach of a strict-liability duty. The recognition of primary-liability claims does not involve skepticism about duties or rules or legal relations and it is consistent with the analysis of private law in terms of corrective justice.


1962 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. W. M. Dias

In the course of their stately opinion in the case of The Wagon Mound the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council declared that “their Lordships have not found it necessary to consider the so-called rule of ‘strict liability’ exemplified in Rylands v. Fletcher and the cases that have followed or distinguished it. Nothing that they have said is intended to reflect on that rule.” The best excuse for the present addition to the controversial literature that is accumulating round this case is that, the courts having yet to pronounce on remoteness in cases of strict liability, there seems to be still some room for speculation, especially with reference to policy. It is therefore hoped that the fall, as it were, of yet another leaf in the forest will at least do no harm.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document