“First do no Harm”. No-Fault Compensation Program for COVID-19 Vaccines as Feasibility and Wisdom of a Policy Instrument to Mitigate Vaccine Hesitancy

Vaccines are so far proven to be safe, although related adverse events cannot be excluded. The urgency for COVID-19 vaccines determined a dilution of the general expectations of safety and efficacy of vaccination (from safe and effective to safe and effective enough). In many countries, a no-fault program was established to compensate individuals who experienced serious vaccine-related injuries. The impressive number of administrations worldwide and the legal indemnity afforded to manufacturers of approved vaccines that cannot be pursued for compensation fed the debate about the availability of a compensation model for COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries. Several European countries have long introduced a system, Vaccine Injury Compensation Programs, to compensate people who suffer physical harm because of vaccination. In Europe, COVID-19 vaccination is strongly recommended for the general population and in many states is declared mandatory for healthcare workers. In 1992, Italy edited Law no. 210 providing legal protection for individuals who reported injuries after mandatory and recommended vaccinations as a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system. Despite its recommended nature, COVID-19 vaccination is excluded from the no-fault model in several European states, and the Italian government is called to provide clear and firm instructions for the management of the many requests for compensation. The authors provide an overview of the existing compensation models in Europe and analyse available legislative proposals.

1. Tort and the tort system

Tort is the area of civil law which provides a remedy for a party who has suffered the breach of a protected interest. Different torts deal with different types of harm or wrongful conduct and the ‘ingredients’ for each of these torts are different; each with its own particular characteristics. This chapter discusses the types of loss or harm covered; competing interests; remedies; comparison of tort with contract law, criminal law, and human rights law; the aims of the law of tort (compensation and deterrence); and alternative routes to compensation. The influence of insurance and of the Compensation Act 2006 is included.

Tort Law Concentrate

Each Concentrate revision guide is packed with essential information, key cases, revision tips, exam Q&As, and more. Concentrates show you what to expect in a law exam, what examiners are looking for, and how to achieve extra marks. Having begun with a consideration of the meaning of tort and the context of the ‘tort system’, Tort Law Concentrate covers the key elements of negligence: duty of care, breach of duty, and causation. Economic loss and psychiatric injury are specifically discussed. The book also explains the intentional torts: trespass to the person and to land as well as the tort in Wilkinson v Downton are covered, as is product liability. The family of nuisance torts, with their importance for environmental control are included, as is the key issue of remedies. This new edition includes coverage of recent case law, such as Barclays Bank plc v Various Claimants (2020) and Lachaux v Independent Print (2019). This edition has been fully updated in light of developments in the law, including the continuing impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

The Medical Malpractice Litigation System

“The Medical Malpractice Litigation System” provides a description of the conventional legal response to negligent adverse events. First, it discusses the origins, nature, and purposes (usually given as compensation and deterrence) of the tort system; explains the economic analysis of tort law (including the concept of negligence), and describes some of the specialized rules that apply only to medical malpractice torts. Most of the chapter is a data-based walk-through of the stages of the malpractice litigation process, including the proportion of cases that enter and proceed through each stage: initiation of claims (including attorney screening), pretrial disposition, trials, verdicts, compensation awards, and adjustments following verdicts. The evidence shows that the great majority of negligently caused injuries never enter the system, trials are rare, and negotiation plays so great a part that the system is best characterized as one of “litigotiation.”

Administrative Delicts and Administrative Delict Law

The subject of study in this paper are administrative-delict legal relations and the terms associated with this kind of relations. The purpose of the study is to analyze the nature of offences and administrative delicts. It is stated that the use of the term “delictum” it's been a certain evolution from private legal term in the sense of “delicta private” to the term, which can be used both in the sense of “delicta private” and value of “delicta publica”. The conclusion is that the term “delict” may be used in public relations and administrative legal use of the term “administrative delict”. Expanding the range of investigated administrative and delict relations, entails a change and the essential characteristics of administrative offenses, and also creates preconditions for formation of administrative-tort system of prevention of offenses, including not only administrative offences but also other offences that are not related to crimes and civil offenses. In this case, the responsibility should be named administrative and delict, which, in essence, will include a modern administrative and administrative-disciplinary liability. Depending on the nature of the administrative delict may be subdivided into administrative offense and administrative misdemeanor. The essential characteristics of an administrative offense should be upheld, and administrative misdemeanor must be attributed those acts which are now administrative and disciplinary misconduct. With this division of administrative delicts it is possible to realize a codification of administrative and delict legislation, i.e. the creation of Administrative-delict code of the Russian Federation. The work also made the assumption that procedural violations are treated as administrative delict. An attempt is made to distinguish between material legal relations in administrative law and administrative procedural legal relations. Concluded that you cannot mix administrative-tort legal relations, as a kind of material with tort and procedural legal relations. In turn, tort and procedural legal relations are an integral part of administrative and legal proceedings, and administrative delict production is an integral part of the administrative process. The methodological basis of the article is dialectical, formal logical methods, formal-legal method and method of interpretation of law.

Incremental Learned Hand Standard, Degrees of Negligence and Allocation of Damages: a Comparative Tort Law and Economics Approach

The incremental Learned Hand standard is recognized as the main contribution of the law and economics literature to legal practice, as an objective criterion of negligence assessment. Traditionally, negligence gradation has been a factor considered by legal technology to allocate the damages. However, one of the main problems in legal practice lies in the establishment of objective criteria for quantitative assessment of the reduction or increase in the indemnity-damage ratio, considering the degree of negligence of the injurer and of the victim. Withal, is it possible to use the incremental Learned Hand standard as criterion of negligence graduation in order to allocate the damages? Using the theoretical foundations of law and economics literature in conjunction with the traditional legal classification of negligence into severe, ordinary and slight, and considering the Brazilian tort system as analytical basis, the paper shows that the answer is positive. The basic idea is that the incremental Learned Hand standard is an algorithm which can be employed in legal practice to systematize the allocation of damages, performing, according to the degree of negligence of the injurer and of the victim, the full compensation or the decouple of the indemnity from the damages, streamlining the application of legal institutes such as comparative negligence, punitive damages, and equitable reduction of compensation (fairness).

12. Nuisance

Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams, and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. Manufacturers and producers are liable for personal injury or damage to property caused by a defective product. The claimant will not only recover in contract for personal injury and property damage caused by the defective product, but he will also be compensated for the cost of replacing the product itself. The Consumer Protection Act 1987 of the UK involves a strict liability regime for defective products on a variety of potential defendants. This discusses the limitations of the tort system in providing compensation to a victim of harm caused by a defective product, and analyses the scope and limitations of the Consumer Protection Act 1987.

10. Product liability

Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams, and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. Manufacturers and producers are liable for personal injury or damage to property caused by a defective product. The claimant will not only recover in contract for personal injury and property damage caused by the defective product, but he will also be compensated for the cost of replacing the product itself. The Consumer Protection Act 1987 involves a strict liability regime for defective products on a variety of potential defendants. This discusses the limitations of the tort system in providing compensation to a victim of harm caused by a defective product, and analyses the scope and limitations of the Consumer Protection Act 1987.

Is the Infringement of a Treaty a Fault?

This contribution deals with the wrongful behaviour of public authorities, in this case in particular the Belgian State, and delves into a challenge that the multi-levelled legal order poses for the national tort system. It inquires how the violation of an international treaty relates to liability in the national legal system. More specifically, the author examines if it is necessary, when dealing with state liability, to limit the concept of fault to the infringements of international treaties with direct effect, excluding the violation of those without such effect.

Tortious Harms

This chapter examines the recent revival of a corrective justice approach to tort law. Seeking to reclaim tort theory from the now dominant welfarist perspective, corrective justice theorists like Ernest Weinib, Arthur Ripstein, Jules Coleman, and John Goldberg have stressed the corrective justice roots of the rules governing compensation for “wrongful” acts. The literature is either silent on what makes an act wrongful in the first place or suggests criteria that seem indistinguishable from some version of cost/benefit analysis. The failure of corrective justice theorists to address the central regulatory question at issue in tort law—appropriate standards of conduct—results from their conflating prohibition and compensation; viewing the tort system in isolation from the larger regulatory regime; and treating the imposition of risk and imposition of harm as distinct forms of conduct, rather than the identical conduct viewed from different temporal perspectives.