Product Liability

Author(s):  
Fairgrieve Duncan ◽  
Richard Goldberg

Product Liability is a recognised authority in the field and covers the product liability laws through which manufacturers, retailers, and others may be held liable to compensate persons who are injured, or who incur financial loss, when the products which they manufacture or sell are defective or not fit for their purpose. Product defects may originate in the production process, be one of design, or be grounded in a failure to issue an adequate warning or directions for safe use and practitioners advising business clients or claimants will find this book provides all the necessary information for practitioners to manage a product liability claim. This new edition has been fully updated to take account of 10 years of development in case law and regulation, and the increasing impact of cross-border and transnational sale of goods. The Court of Justice of the European Union handed down major rulings concerning the Product Liability Directive which affect the application of the Directive and national arrangements and Fairgrieve and Goldberg examines this in detail. For any legal practitioner operating in areas which require knowledge of European product liability law, an understanding of the impact of recent developments is essential and this work is an essential resource for practitioners working on product liability, sale of goods, personal injury and negligence. The work provides comprehensive coverage of the law of negligence as it applies to product liability, of the strict liability provisions of the Consumer Protection Act 1987, and of the EU's Product Liability Directive on which the Act is based. Although the majority of cases involve pharmaceuticals and medical devices, in recent English cases the allegedly defective products have been as diverse as a child's buggy, an All Terrain Vehicle, and even a coffee cup. Many cases are brought as group actions, and the book examines the rights of those who are injured by defective products. As well as considering the perspective of the law as it has developed in the UK, this edition contains detailed discussion of case law from other jurisdictions including the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France and Germany. The coverage in the work is complemented by a full analysis of issues which arise in transnational litigation involving problems of jurisdiction and the choice of laws.

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-70
Author(s):  
Martin Partington

This chapter considers how law is made in the UK, who makes it, and the constitutional principles which give them the authority for making it and imposing it on society. There is a detailed account of the legislative procedure of the UK Parliament, and the different types of legislation enacted by Parliament. The legislative functions of the devolved administrations are mentioned. The law-making functions of judges, particularly through case law and the interpretation of statutes, are also considered, as is the impact of the Council of Europe on human rights. Finally, an outline of the law-making processes of the European Union is given.


Author(s):  
Eleonora Rosati

This chapter discusses the impact of CJEU copyright case law on national copyright regimes, even beyond the wording of EU directives as transposed into national legal systems. To this end, it focuses on the UK and, following a discussion of what immediate changes the departure from the EU and the EEA (Brexit) would have (also with regard to issues of exhaustion), it explores to what extent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has changed UK copyright law. EU decisions have had an impact in areas such as: copyright subsistence, subject matter categorization, primary/accessory liability, standard of infringement, exceptions and limitations, and enforcement (with particular regard to website blocking jurisprudence). Overall, this chapter shows the legacy of CJEU case law, and how pervasive the impact of such case law is.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 122-129
Author(s):  
Patrick F. Todd

After Brexit, the United Kingdom is unlikely to continue pursuing integration with other Member States of the European Union, including through competition policy. As a result, the time is ripe to reconsider the role of the single market imperative in competition law, in particular in relation to vertical restraints where the goal of market integration plays a pivotal role. This article shows that recent European vertical restraints decisions and case law, in particular concerning territorial and online restraints, have been motivated in whole or in part by the single market imperative (SMI). It then examines how the law in the UK might follow a different path post-Brexit, taking the Ping case as an example. However, a similar change is not likely to be forthcoming in relation to the law governing pricing restraints, which are not obviously linked to the SMI and which have been the subject of much enforcement in the UK both before and during the UK's membership of the EU.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Alexander KOOF

On 29 March 2017, the UK made use of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and thus initiated its withdrawal from the European Union. As a result, the UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020 (23:00 UTC). This paper provides a legal assessment of the impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) on zonal authorisation and mutual recognition procedures regarding the authorisation of plant protection products. Many legal issues are unclear in this respect due to the lack of European and national case law. The German Administrative Court of Braunschweig had to decide in an urgent procedure on the effects of Brexit with regards to the authorisation of a plant protection product in the mutual recognition procedure.


2005 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 475-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Kadner Graziano

The choice of law-rules for contractual obligations is harmonized in the European Union and the system established by the Rome I-Convention has proved its merits.1 The choice of law rules for tortious or delictual liability, on the contrary, is still largely left to the national legislators and courts2 and they differ very much from one country to the other. Two Hague Conventions cover particular issues.3 Neither of them is in force in the UK.


Author(s):  
Dickinson Andrew

This chapter highlights United Kingdom perspectives on the Hague Principles. On 31 January 2020, the UK ceased to be a member of the EU. Under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement concluded between the UK and the EU, the UK will apply the Rome I Regulation to contracts concluded before the end of the transition period. The UK has taken a policy decision to continue to apply the Rome I Regulation to determine the law applicable to contractual obligations with respect to contracts concluded after the end of the transition period, and has adopted legislation to achieve that end. Following the ‘IP completion day’, UK courts will have no power to refer questions of law to the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU) and will not be bound by decisions of the CJEU made after that date, although they ‘may have regard to’ such decisions. In the absence of a significant existing body of CJEU case law concerning the Rome I Regulation and its predecessor, the 1980 Rome Convention on the law applicable to contractual obligations, UK courts will seek guidance from the existing body of local case law, which will continue to bind them in accordance with common law rules of precedent. In this enterprise, the Hague Principles, as an instrument adopted by the members of a well-respected international legal organization of which the UK is a long-standing member, may prove to be an influential tool, especially when addressing novel questions.


2020 ◽  
pp. 352-383
Author(s):  
Sylvia de Mars

This chapter traces how the free movement of persons developed, culminating into a constitutional identity for EU nationals that extends rights to economically inactive free movers as well. EU citizenship was formally established in 1992, and can be used as a marker to separate two distinct eras of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case law on free movement of persons. The chapter then considers the personal and material scope of EU citizenship, and looks at CJEU case law on the free movement of EU citizens between 1992 and 2004. It also assesses the impact of the Citizenship Directive in 2004, as well as the impact of Brexit on EU citizenship. The controversy surrounding the development of ‘citizenship rights’ is of particular interest given the Brexit referendum; limitless immigration from the EU was found to be one of the primary reasons why the UK voted to leave the EU.


Author(s):  
Julio Baquero Cruz

This book discusses the impact of the difficult situation the European Union is currently going through on some structural elements of its legal order, looking for symptoms of decay, exploring examples of resistance, and assessing its overall state of health. The original choices made by the drafters of the Treaties and by the Court of Justice are put in their proper historical perspective, understanding Union law as a tool of civilization, and explaining its current problems, at least in part, as a consequence of the waning of the initial impetus behind integration. The concrete themes to be explored are the following: primacy, the national resistance to it and constitutional pluralism; the preliminary rulings procedure; Union citizenship, equality, and human dignity; the scope of the Charter and the standard of protection of fundamental rights; and the rigidity and fragmentation of the Union system in connection with the recent occasional use of international law as an alternative to Union law. The book looks at the development of the law throughout the decades, inevitably losing much detail, but hopefully also uncovering structural connections and continuities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Anna McNamara

The impact of Covid-19 placed Higher Education leadership in a state of crisis management, where decision making had to be swift and impactful. This research draws on ethea of mindfulness, actor training techniques, referencing high-reliability organisations (HRO). Interviews conducted by the author with three leaders of actor training conservatoires in Higher Education institutions in Australia, the UK and the USA reflect on crisis management actions taken in response to the impact of Covid-19 on their sector, from which high-frequency words are identified and grouped thematically. Reflecting on these high-frequency words and the thematic grouping, a model of mindful leadership is proposed as a positive tool that may enable those in leadership to recognise and respond efficiently to wider structural frailties within Higher Education, with reference to the capacity of leaders to operate with increased mindfulness, enabling a more resilient organisation that unlocks the locus of control.


2021 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-106588
Author(s):  
Sarah Munday ◽  
Julian Savulescu

The past few years have brought significant breakthroughs in understanding human genetics. This knowledge has been used to develop ‘polygenic scores’ (or ‘polygenic risk scores’) which provide probabilistic information about the development of polygenic conditions such as diabetes or schizophrenia. They are already being used in reproduction to select for embryos at lower risk of developing disease. Currently, the use of polygenic scores for embryo selection is subject to existing regulations concerning embryo testing and selection. Existing regulatory approaches include ‘disease-based' models which limit embryo selection to avoiding disease characteristics (employed in various formats in Australia, the UK, Italy, Switzerland and France, among others), and 'laissez-faire' or 'libertarian' models, under which embryo testing and selection remain unregulated (as in the USA). We introduce a novel 'Welfarist Model' which limits embryo selection according to the impact of the predicted trait on well-being. We compare the strengths and weaknesses of each model as a way of regulating polygenic scores. Polygenic scores create the potential for existing embryo selection technologies to be used to select for a wider range of predicted genetically influenced characteristics including continuous traits. Indeed, polygenic scores exist to predict future intelligence, and there have been suggestions that they will be used to make predictions within the normal range in the USA in embryo selection. We examine how these three models would apply to the prediction of non-disease traits such as intelligence. The genetics of intelligence remains controversial both scientifically and ethically. This paper does not attempt to resolve these issues. However, as with many biomedical advances, an effective regulatory regime must be in place as soon as the technology is available. If there is no regulation in place, then the market effectively decides ethical issues.


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