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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | If they were more familiar with Medieval law, they would know it captures law at its most basic. It reflects a time when people did not rely exclusively on courts to resolve their grievances. If a court couldn't give a satisfactory resolution, the dispute would be settled in a private, often violent manner. The result was a body of law that possessed great awareness of the limits of its own power, and of the intense need to lay out a law that people would choose to follow. As a basic prerequisite, Medieval tort could not leave harms unsatisfied. Its operating principle: strict liability. | |
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< | If Tort professors knew more legal history, they would also know that Medieval law did not appear in a vacuum. For much of Europe, Medieval tort was based on Roman law, preserved with surprising fidelity by the Byzantines and the Barbarians who inherited Rome's shattered empire. The strict liability of Salic and Visigoth law, not too mention the Corpus Iuris Civilis, came from decidedly ancient sources. And in fact, many ancient law sources share a basic notion that, when it comes to private harm, intent will not excuse injury. So long as causation can be proved, recompense is required. Jewish law? Strict Liability. Code of Hammurabi? Strict liability. The reason? Ancient societies simply couldn't have people running around doing harm and getting away with it, even if the harm was unforeseeable. | >
> | If Tort professors knew more legal history, they would also know that Medieval law did not appear in a vacuum. For much of Europe, Medieval tort was based on Roman law, preserved with surprising fidelity by the Byzantines and the Barbarians who inherited Rome's shattered empire. The strict liability of Salic and Visigoth law, not too mention the Corpus Iuris Civilis, came from decidedly ancient sources. And in fact, many ancient law sources share a basic notion that, when it comes to private harm, intent will not excuse injury. So long as causation can be proved, recompense is required. Jewish law? Strict liability. Code of Hammurabi? Strict liability. The reason? Ancient societies simply couldn't have people running around doing harm and getting away with it, even if the harm was unforeseeable. | | | | |
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< | Yet, despite its rich and distinguished history, strict liability is usually a dirty word in the legal academy. If the behavior is not abnormally dangerous, the notion that people should be punished, regardless of their intent, does not meet a welcome audience. Fifty years ago, across the pond, Bolton v. Stone gets it wrong, and now all of my peers in 2010 agree people aren't responsibly for the consequences of their actions. A good effort can get you off with nary a pecuniary wrist-slap, even if you give a pedestrian a concussion because you didn't buy a tall enough fence for your ballpark. Almost not harming someone becomes the same as doing no harm, so long as you try really hard. Hold people liable for damages, even if they made a reasonable effort to avoid them? | >
> | Yet, despite its rich and distinguished history, strict liability is usually a dirty word in the legal academy. If the behavior is not abnormally dangerous, the notion that people should be punished, regardless of their intent, does not meet a welcome audience. Fifty years ago, across the pond, Bolton v. Stone gets it wrong, and now all of my peers in 2010 agree "reasonable" people aren't responsible for the consequences of their actions. A good effort can get you off with nary a pecuniary wrist-slap, even if you give a pedestrian a concussion because you didn't buy a tall enough fence for your ballpark. Almost not harming someone becomes the same as doing no harm, so long as you try really hard. Hold people liable for damages, even if they made a reasonable effort to avoid them? | | | Yes. | | | Theoretically, your almost-effective shooting range excuses you from liability. Because you tried to make it safe, and "reasonable" people would agree that it would usually be safe, Little Timmy is not be able to recover from you. He has to swallow the cost of his injury so you can enjoy your "right" to build a shooting range. He pays a leg, and you get to enjoy your freedom to participate in semi-dangerous behavior with impunity. In essence, our society has decided it is better shift the costs to the random injured individual than to stifle free enterprise with the occasional award of monetary damages.
Damage without compensation is a bad way to conduct tort law | |
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< | At its most elemental level, law is meant to provide means of redress for grievances, so as to avoid people taking private revenge. An injury creates a cause for revenge. By not compensating it, we are leaving injured parties to suffer. Every time negligence excuses a harm, the law perpetrates injustice. | | | | |
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< | Ironically, such a barbarity is only possible in civilized society. Some time ago in the mythic past, the law and the private citizen struck a bargain. The private citizen would cease his vendettas and vigilantism, ceding "police powers" and law enforcement to a centralized authority, and in return, the law would make sure that the private citizens' traditional grievances would not go unpunished. Few grievances are more traditional than getting injured, and the law, since ancient times, has resolved such disputes through compensation. The private citizen trusts the law to protect his person. For the law to create a loophole based on reasonable effort is to leave the private citizen hanging in the wind, with no way of mitigating an unexpected, and certainly unmerited, calamity. | >
> | It should not be a controversial proposition that the law should compensate a person who, through no fault of his own, is injured by the acts of another. It is a travesty that "reasonableness" and negligence subvert this fundamental standard. | | | | |
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< | It should not be a controversial proposition that the law should compensate a person who, through no fault of his own, is injured by the acts of another. It is a travesty that the "reasonableness" test subverts this fundamental standard. | >
> | Strict Liability Will Work in the Real World | | | | |
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> | If the U.S. ran on a strict liability system, life wouldn't change much. Baseball stadiums might have more enclosed roofs. Hockey games might be shielded by higher glass. Insurance would be a lot more extensive and widespread. But strict liability would not be a paradigm shift. A legal system based on strict liability will create economic incentive to invent cheap and effective ways to prevent harm. Free enterprise will continue to exist. It will just be safer. | | | | |
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< | Why Strict Liability Will Work Out Fine in the Real World | >
> | I have heard the argument that strict liability would create incentive for companies to flout the law more often, and simply pay damages. I think it is a stupid argument, for two reasons. | | | | |
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< | Fear: Won't strict liability lead to situations where people don't bother to take precautions and just pay damage, because its cheaper? | >
> | Increased demand for safety will likely make the cost of precautions cheaper than the cost and risk of litigation. | | | | |
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< | Answer 1: No/Not necessarily.
A legal system based on strict liability will create economic incentive to invent cheap ways to prevent harm. | >
> | If capitalism is good at anything, it is exploiting opportunity. Manufacturers will be fighting tooth and nail to design and sell cheap and effective safety measures.
Companies already flout the law
When legal damages are less than the cost of precautions, companies behave negligently. This is not a new phenomenon. Example: Eben's story of the Goodyear tire rims. The only real difference is that under strict liability, companies will always pay for the injuries they cause. Likewise, those that get injured will have full recourse under the law for any damage they endure, rather than being barred from recovery in situations where the perpetrator acted "reasonably." | | | | |
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< | Answer 2: It doesn't matter.
Companies already do this under negligence/current tort. They make dangerous things, and accept the danger of a lawsuit as an occasionally and controllable cost. Example of the semi-trailer rims. The only difference is that now, instead of allowing companies to not be held liable when they do damage while acting reasonably, they will always pay for the injuries they cause. | | | | |
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