Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
… The Article argues that the Supreme Court and lower courts must adopt a uniform analytical framework for determining proximate cause in statutory claims. The Article demonstrates that the Supreme Court’s failure to do so thus far has produced deep doctrinal incoherence, culminating in the Court’s inability to articulate a standard for proximate cause under the Fair Housing Act in Bank of America. The Article proposes that courts should uniformly apply the ‘scope of liability’ framework as set forth in the recent Restatement (Third) of Torts. It contends that the scope of liability framework properly anchors proximate cause in the statutory scheme, ensures doctrinal determinacy, and prevents improper judicial legislation …

Nicole Summers, Setting the Standard for Proximate Cause in the Wake of Bank of America Corp v City of Miami 97 North Carolina Law Review 529 (2019).

First posted 2019-04-06 07:25:33