Category Archives: Personal Injuries
Michael Dugeri, ‘Rethinking Tort Liability Regimes for AI-Related Claims in Canada and Europe: A Case Study of AI Applications in Disease Diagnosis’
ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly being integrated into various activities along the continuum of patient care. In oncology, which relies heavily on radiology, AI applications are used for oncologic imaging, ranging from imaging acquisition to cancer screening to treatment planning and response monitoring. This has resulted in AI-assisted radiology playing an increasingly important […]
Jason Jia-Xi Wu, ‘How Do “Bankruptcy Grifters” Destroy Value in Mass Tort Settlements? In re Purdue Pharma as a Bargaining Failure’
ABSTRACT Bankruptcy has become the endgame of mass tort litigation. Increasingly, corporate tortfeasors have resorted to bankruptcy to halt pending mass tort lawsuits and force parties to renegotiate. This creates bargaining leverage for corporate tortfeasors in settling mass tort liabilities while providing efficient means for tort victims to aggregate their claims. However, one recent development […]
Young, Nagdee and Pieterse, ‘The dose-effect relationship in PTSD: the South African Constitutional Court Case of AK v Minister of Police (2022)’
ABSTRACT The decision of the South African Constitutional Court in AK v Minister of Police has implications for law enforcement agencies that fail the victims of crime. In this matter, the plaintiff sued the Minister and others for damages after officers had failed to rescue her from the perpetrator(s) of a protracted sexual assault and […]
Duffourc and Gerke, ‘Decoding US Tort Liability in Healthcare’s Black-Box Era: Lessons From the EU’
ABSTRACT The rapid development of sophisticated artificial intelligence (‘AI’) tools in healthcare presents new possibilities for improving medical treatment and general health. Currently, such AI tools can perform a wide range of health-related tasks, from specialized autonomous systems that diagnose diabetic retinopathy to general-use generative models like ChatGPT that answer users’ health-related questions. On the […]
Mark Geistfeld, ‘Reformulating Vicarious Liability in Terms of Basic Tort Doctrine: The Example of Employer Liability for Sexual Assaults in the Workplace’
ABSTRACT The most common form of vicarious liability subjects an employer (or principal) to liability for the torts an employee (agent) commits within the scope of employment. Under the motive test, an employee’s tortious misconduct is outside the scope of employment when wholly motivated by personal reasons – a rule that almost invariably prevents the […]
Janet O’Sullivan, ‘Gambling Disorder, Financial Loss and Suicide – A Journey to the “Outer Reaches” of the Common Law’
ABSTRACT Almost as soon as Briggs J opined in Calvert v William Hill Credit Ltd (2008) that ‘recognition of a common law duty to protect a problem gambler from self-inflicted gambling losses involves a journey to the outermost reaches of the tort of negligence, to the realm of the truly exceptional’, the legal and technological […]
James Goudkamp, ‘Automated Vehicle Liability and AI’
ABSTRACT Few, if any, developments have had a greater impact on the common law, and in particular tort law, than the advent of the motor vehicle. It is a notorious fact that tort law underwent seismic shifts over the course of the twentieth century in response to cars substantially replacing earlier modes of transportation. The […]
Ellen Bublick, ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About the Duty of Care in Negligence Law: The Utah Supreme Court Sets an Example in Boynton v Kennecott Utah Copper’
ABSTRACT Every day, state common law courts define the duty of care in negligence law. There is no formula for how courts should determine duty. Yet when judges are charged with important decisions about whether to open or shut the courthouse doors to whole categories of claimants, judges need some framework for decision. This article […]
Goldberg and Zipursky, ‘Sherman v Department of Public Safety: Institutional Responsibility for Sexual Assault’
ABSTRACT This article addresses the intersection of three important topics: sexual assault, police misconduct, and employer liability for employee torts. As to the last of these, while there have long been debates among jurists in the US concerning the proper scope of respondeat superior liability, courts have mostly adhered to an approach that focuses on […]
Sarah Swan, ‘Beltran-Serrano v City of Tacoma’
ABSTRACT In Tacoma, Washington, on a late June afternoon in 2013, a police officer brutally shot an unarmed, mentally-ill, middle-aged homeless man four times in the back with a Glock 45. He was not a suspect in any criminal wrongdoing, and horrified eyewitnesses confirmed that he was not posing a threat to anyone, including the […]