scholarly journals Differential safety liability of road and rail

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Murray Alexander King
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Road User ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Road ◽  
Safety Aspects ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cost

<p>Rail safety is closely controlled, but there is less supervision of the actual road, its construction and condition. Safety is the responsibility of the road user, not the provider. This is a feature of the common law, including the rule that no liability attaches to road omissions, and of legislation governing road and rail. It has its roots in the many centuries of highway development. New Zealand legislation has few safety duties for road owners, but very comprehensive and strict obligations for railways. This is also true internationally, except that in some jurisdictions there are enhanced controls on road. Health and safety laws may not cover the public safety aspects of roads, but they do cover all aspects of railways. The imbalance increases the cost and reduces the effectiveness of rail. Potential reforms of the law are proposed.</p>

scholarly journals Differential safety liability of road and rail

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Murray Alexander King
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Road User ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Road ◽  
Safety Aspects ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cost

<p>Rail safety is closely controlled, but there is less supervision of the actual road, its construction and condition. Safety is the responsibility of the road user, not the provider. This is a feature of the common law, including the rule that no liability attaches to road omissions, and of legislation governing road and rail. It has its roots in the many centuries of highway development. New Zealand legislation has few safety duties for road owners, but very comprehensive and strict obligations for railways. This is also true internationally, except that in some jurisdictions there are enhanced controls on road. Health and safety laws may not cover the public safety aspects of roads, but they do cover all aspects of railways. The imbalance increases the cost and reduces the effectiveness of rail. Potential reforms of the law are proposed.</p>

scholarly journals Sexual harassment of staff by patients in mental health units

1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-169
Author(s):  
Maria B. Tomé de la Granja
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Verbal Abuse ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common

The Health and Safety Executive (1992) defines violence against staff as “any incident in which an employee is threatened or assaulted by a member of the public in circumstances arising out of the course of his or her employment”. Verbal abuse and threats are, as the Health and Safety Executive notes, the most common types of incidents, and staff have the common-law right to be protected from such incidents in the course of their work. While the literature on physical violence against mental health professionals is quite large and expanding (see, for example, Health and Safety Commission, 1987; Shepherd, 1994; Wykes, 1994), comparatively little emphasis has been placed on verbal assaults, although these may be extremely distressing.

scholarly journals A Fairly Genuine Comment on Honest Opinion in New Zealand

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Bevan Marten
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Common

This paper discusses the defence of honest opinion in relation to New Zealand’s Defamation Act 1992. Two key issues are addressed: the place of the common law “public interest” requirement in the New Zealand context, and the concept of “genuineness” under section 10 of the Act. It is argued that the public interest requirement should be abolished, and that the relevant statutory provisions be redrafted to achieve this. The redraft would also clarify a potential flaw in the wording of the defence that may render it unavailable to some defendants who are quoting the opinions of others.

scholarly journals New Zealand’s Public Trust Doctrine

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nicola Jane Hulley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Coastal Area ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Trust Doctrine ◽  
The Common

<p>This paper presents an argument that there is a public trust doctrine which is part of New Zealand’s common law. The public doctrine imposes an obligation on administrative decision-makers, with respect to decisions that impact commonly held natural resources, to act in the interests of the public. I argue the doctrine was inherited by New Zealand in 1840, as part of the English common law, and that it has been subsequently recognised in the New Zealand common law. I also argue that the doctrine has not been extinguished by the Resource Management Act 1991 or the Marine Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011: the common law doctrine supplements these regulatory regimes. My argument concludes that the doctrine is best conceived of as a ground of judicial review, perhaps under the heading of illegality, and that there are strong normative arguments for its augmentation by common law development or legislative codification.</p>

scholarly journals New Zealand’s Public Trust Doctrine

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nicola Jane Hulley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Coastal Area ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Trust Doctrine ◽  
The Common

<p>This paper presents an argument that there is a public trust doctrine which is part of New Zealand’s common law. The public doctrine imposes an obligation on administrative decision-makers, with respect to decisions that impact commonly held natural resources, to act in the interests of the public. I argue the doctrine was inherited by New Zealand in 1840, as part of the English common law, and that it has been subsequently recognised in the New Zealand common law. I also argue that the doctrine has not been extinguished by the Resource Management Act 1991 or the Marine Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011: the common law doctrine supplements these regulatory regimes. My argument concludes that the doctrine is best conceived of as a ground of judicial review, perhaps under the heading of illegality, and that there are strong normative arguments for its augmentation by common law development or legislative codification.</p>

scholarly journals Thabo Meli Revisited: The Pernicious Effects of Result-Driven Decisions

2013 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-55
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Arenson
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
The Common

Despite the hackneyed expression that ‘judges should interpret the law and not make it’, the fact remains that there is some scope within the separation of powers doctrine for the courts to develop the common law incrementally. To this extent, the courts can effectively legislate, but only to this limited extent if they are to respect the separation of powers doctrine. On occasion, however, the courts have usurped the power entrusted to Parliament, and particularly so in instances where a strict application of the existing law would lead to results that offend their personal notions of what is fair and just. When this occurs, the natural consequence is that lawyers, academics and the public in general lose respect for both the judges involved as well as the adversarial system of criminal justice. In order to illustrate this point, attention will focus on the case of Thabo Meli v United Kingdom in which the Privy Council, mistakenly believing that it could not reach its desired outcome through a strict application of the common law rule of temporal coincidence, emasculated the rule beyond recognition in order to convict the accused. Moreover, the discussion to follow will demonstrate that not only was the court wrong in its belief that the case involved the doctrine of temporal coincidence, but the same result would have been achieved had the Council correctly identified the issue as one of legal causation and correctly applied the principles relating thereto.

Determining Minimum Contract Time for Highway Projects

2000 ◽  
Vol 1712 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin-Fang Shr ◽  
Benjamin P. Thompson ◽  
Jeffrey S. Russell ◽  
Bin Ran ◽  
H. Ping Tserng
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Road User ◽  
User Cost ◽  
Time Curve ◽  
Highway Projects ◽  
The Road ◽  
State Highway ◽  
Florida Department ◽  
The Cost ◽  
State Highway Agencies

An increasing number of state highway agencies (SHAs) are using A (cost) + B (time cost) bidding ( A + B bidding) for highway construction. The A + B bidding concept is designed to shorten the total contract time by allowing each contractor to bid the number of days in which the work can be accomplished, in addition to the traditional cost bid. The SHA is then presented with the problem of determining a reasonable range of contract time submitted by the bidders. Most SHAs do not currently restrict the range of B. However, several problems may arise from an unrestricted range of B. First, if no minimum is set for B, a bidder may inflate the cost bid and submit an unreasonably low B, using the excess cost bid to cover the disincentives charged for exceeding the time bid. Second, if no maximum is set for B, then a bidder with a high B and a low-cost bid may be awarded the job and make an unreasonable amount of money from incentive payments. This study develops a quantified model of the price-time bidding contract. A construction cost-versus-time curve is developed from Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) data. The contractor’s price-versus-time curve is then combined with the road-user cost to determine the optimum lower limit to be set on B. Finally, several projects completed by the Florida DOT will be used to illustrate this model.

scholarly journals The Needs of the Many and the Needs of the Few: A New System of Public Interest Intervention for New Zealand

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Edward Clark
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Comprehensive System ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Judicial Lawmaking ◽  
The Many ◽  
New System

The traditional adversarial system sees the courts as simply a means of resolving disputes between private parties. The dispute is thus no one else’s concern but the parties’. This view of the courts’ role, however, fails to take into account judicial lawmaking. If a person is affected by an act of lawmaking, it is only just that they should have a chance to be heard. Further, before they make a decision the courts should understand the perspectives of those who will be affected by the rule laiddown.This article argues that allowing affected nonparties to make submissions as public interest intervenors will assist both the affected persons and the courts. In order to balance the interests of the parties, the intervenors, and the public at large effectively, a comprehensive system of rules that both welcome and regulate public interest intervention is needed. This article recommends the adoption of such a system of rules, substantially based on the effective and well established rules on intervention contained in the Rules of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Almensvellets affortryllelse - Neoliberale anfægtelser af det fælles bedste

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Government Failure ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many ◽  
Von Mises ◽  
Modern Mass

This article revisits the origins of neoliberalism, arguing that it arose in the socialist calculation debates in the 1920s and 1930s. In these debates, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek contested socialist conceptions of the public interest, claiming that the market’s price mechanism was far better able to represent the many diffe-rent preferences that a modern mass society consists of. The market, they stressed, was far more efficient at coordinating the economy than state planners who would never be able to calculate or aggregate the necessary data on people’s preferences, which was required to direct markets. This contestation of the common good, the article argues, has been a mainstay throughout neoliberalism’s intellectual history, serving as the revolving point of post-war analyses of government failure.

“Literary Institutions are Founded and Endowed for the Common Good”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
The Common ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Civic Mindedness ◽  
Primary Mission

This chapter examines Bowdoin College, which was supported by district elites who worked to erect a regional center of higher learning to which they could send their sons rather than incur the cost of dispatching them south to other colleges. On the morning of Bowdoin's opening, appointed president Joseph McKeen pronounced the college's primary mission: “That the inhabitants of this district may have their own sons to fill the liberal professions among them, and particularly to instruct them in the principles and practice of our holy religion, is doubtless the object of this institution.” This conception of higher education's function in American society drew heavily on a social ethos of civic-mindedness that assigned priority to social responsibility over individuals' self indulgence. Characterized by the practice of civic virtue and a commitment to the public good, civic-mindedness provided social institutions, including those dedicated to higher learning, a source from which to derive their central aims.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document