Category Archives: Tort
‘Remedies to Digital Vulnerability in European Private Law’: University of Trieste, 10-11 April 2025
The Trieste conference follows two previous conferences held within the same project in Ferrara (2023) and in Rome Tor Vergata (2024), which examined the legal status of digital vulnerability in European private law and its interaction with artificial intelligence, respectively. Building on the previous findings and starting from the assumption that many, if not all, […]
‘No assumption of responsibility after release from police custody: Dobson v Leicestershire Police’
In the tragic case of Dobson v Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police [2025] EWHC 272 (KB), HHJ Bird examined whether the police had assumed responsibility for the wellbeing of a person released from custody. The court held that there was no assumption of responsibility, and the claim failed. Alexander Cornelius, pupil barrister at 12KBW, analyses […]
‘Gambling with Consent: Free, Specific, and Informed Consent in Data Protection Law’
BACKGROUND In RTM v Bonne Terre Ltd [2025] EWHC 111 (KB), the High Court considered claims brought in data protection and the tort of misuse of private information. The Claimant described himself as a ‘recovering online gambling addict’ [1]. He sought damages for harm, distress and financial loss, and a declaration that his rights under […]
Ryan and McMichael, ‘The Future of Frozen Embryos’
ABSTRACT The 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision in LePage v Center for Reproductive Medicine, which declared frozen embryos to be ‘children’, represents a significant shift in the legal treatment of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United States. This Article examines the context, implications, and potential consequences of LePage for family law, tort law, and […]
Emad Atiq, ‘The Disaggregated Hand Formula’
ABSTRACT Commercial activities, like selling a car or serving hot coffee, can generate a risk of loss to which multiple individuals are exposed. Likewise, the burdens of avoiding such risks are rarely borne by a single person. When burdens and losses distribute across multiple stakeholders, when should negligence law tolerate or condemn the risky choice? […]
Mark Fenster, ‘Breach Agents: The Legal Liability of Third Parties for the Breach of Reputational NDAs’
ABSTRACT Nondisclosure agreements intended to keep secret information that could harm one or both parties’ reputations have proliferated over the past decade. Many of them have been breached, some quite famously. Does a third party who assists a contracting party in breaching such an agreement — a member of the press or a family member, […]
Evans and Gardner, ‘The Future of Tort Law: Property, Technology, And Most Importantly, People: Reflections on Donal Nolan, Questions of Liability (Hart, 2023)’
ABSTRACT This Article reviews, reflects, and builds on, Donal Nolan’s Questions of Liability; a book made up of a collection of 12 of Nolan’s most influential pieces (and one new addition). In doing so, we adopt two themes; (1) we explore the ability of the law of tort, as advocated by Nolan, to adapt to […]
Gregory Sisk, ‘Immunity for Imaginary Policy in Tort Claims Against the Federal Government’
ABSTRACT Fictional policy justifications for official negligence are regularly accepted by the federal courts to shield the federal government from liability for ordinary tortious wrongdoing. The lower federal courts have adopted an extravagant interpretation of the discretionary function exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act that applies whenever a policy implication can be theorized. Under […]
‘Can Tort Theory be Foundationalist?’
Adam Slavny, ‘Wrongs, Harms, and Compensation: Paying for Our Mistakes’ (2023). Adam Slavny’s ‘Wrongs, Harms, and Compensation: Paying for Our Mistakes’ rejects a basic premise of most contemporary tort theory. It renounces all aspiration to interpretive adequacy and holds contemporary tort law up to rigorous philosophical scrutiny. The results are invariably stimulating, usually illuminating, and […]
Christopher Jaeger, ‘The Hand Formula’s Unequal Inputs’
ABSTRACT Tort cases often hinge on whether the defendant behaved ‘unreasonably’. Tort theorists have long debated what makes behavior unreasonable, with many seeking answers in economic theory or Kantian philosophy. But the question of whether a tort defendant’s conduct was reasonable or unreasonable is typically a question for the jury. And we know very little […]