The Damages Lottery

A man slips on a dance floor and breaks his leg. He recovers damages. A child has both legs amputated as a result of meningitis and is awarded nothing. The law's justification for awarding damages in the first case is that the man's injury was the fault of someone else, while in the second case damages are denied because nobody was at fault. In this searching critique of the present law and practice relating to damages, Professor Patrick Atiyah shows that this system is in fact a lottery. He contends that the public are paying far too much for an unfair and inefficient insurance system and tha.

A man slips on a dance floor and breaks his leg. He recovers damages. A child has both legs amputated as a result of meningitis and is awarded nothing. The law's justification for awarding damages in the first case is that the man's injury was the fault of someone else, while in the second case damages are denied because nobody was at fault. In this searching critique of the present law and practice relating to damages, Professor Patrick Atiyah shows that this system is in fact a lottery. He contends that the public are paying far too much for an unfair and inefficient insurance system and that reform is long overdue. His conclusion is that actions for damages for injuries should be abolished and replaced with a new no-fault road accident scheme, and actions for other injuries should be dealt with by individual or group insurance policies.

A classic treatment of the law relating to compensation for personal injuries, this edition discusses the relevant legal rules as well as the social, political and economic issues underlying the law.

The focus of the essays in this book is on the relationship between compensation culture, social values and tort damages for personal injuries. A central concern of the public and political perception of personal injuries claims is the high cost of tort claims to society, reflected in insurance premiums, often accompanied by an assumption that tort law and practice is flawed and improperly raising such costs. The aims of this collection are to first clarify the relationship between tort damages for personal injuries and the social values that the law seeks to reflect and to balance, then to critically assess tort reforms, including both proposals for reform and actual implemented reforms, in light of how they advance or hinder those values. Reforms of substantive and procedural law in respect of personal injury damages are analysed, with perspectives from England and Wales, Canada, Australia, Ireland and continental Europe. The essays offer valuable insights to anyone interested in the reform of tort law or the tort process in respect of personal injuries.

This text offers an overview of the tort system for the non-lawyer or new law undergraduate. This new edition looks at topics such as the theories of tort law, accident compensation and its future, the rise of negligence, and issues in economic loss.

NEW in paperback From the Reviews of the hardback edition: This is a fascinating and thought-provoking collection of eight essays..... Taken together they represent a coherent and compelling exposition of the English law of obligations.... One is left with the picture of an [author] ... who remains a devotee of "practical scholarship" and the deductive technique of the common law and has a grasp on its intricacies second to non." Edwin Peel, The Law Quarterly Review, 1999 "[These essays], all concerned with various aspects of contract, tort and unjust enrichment, are a pleasure to peruse, and a distinct cut above the usual lacklustre collection of past triumphs now beyond their sell-by date. Without exception they are both topical and relevant: ... together they form a readable, scholarly and eclectic mixture of exposition and polemic, of speculation and analysis" Andrew Tettenborn, The Cambridge Law Journal, 1999 "..quite simply the most convincing and complete explanation of the law of obligations that is currently available - the book is thorough, compelling, definitive, and highly important." Paul Kearns, Anglo-American Law Review, 1999 "an extremely important work, produced by a leading academic." David Wright, Adelaide Law Review

Feminist Perspectives on Tort brings together acknowledged experts in these two areas to pursue a distinctly feminist approach to the major areas of tort law.

This book explores the performance of compensation law in addressing the needs of the injured. Compensation procedure can be dangerous to your health and may fail to compensate without aggravation/creating other problems. This book takes a refreshing and insightful approach to the law of compensation considering, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the actual effect of compensation law on people seeking compensation. Tort law, workers' compensation, medical law, industrial injury law and other schemes are examined and unintended consequences for injured people are considered. These include ongoing physical and mental illness, failure to rehabilitate, the impact on social security entitlements, medical care as well as the impact on those who serve – the lawyers, administrators, medical practitioners etc. All are explored in this timely and fascinating book. The contributors include lawyers, psychologists, and medical practitioners from multiple jurisdictions including Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy and the UK.

This is the second volume in the annual McPherson Lecture Series, inaugurated by the University of Queensland TC Beirne Law School, which hosts a celebrated international scholar or legal expert to deliver a series of three lectures. In the first two of these thought-provoking lectures, Peter Cane examines the political and economic significance of personal injury law. In his final lecture, he explores the possible future role of tort law as a way of dealing with the social problem of personal injury. He questions whether tort law should provide compensation for non-monetary harm resulting from personal injury, while acknowledging that it would continue to feature as one element of a mixed regime for dealing with personal injuries comprising a range of diverse regulatory and compensatory arrangements.