Torts
For course syllabus, study materials, discussion forum, past midterm and final exams, sample answers, and additional essays, see the TWEN site
All enrolled students must sign on the TWEN site. We will use TWEN for announcements, discussion, distribution of exams, etc. Moreover, important study materials, including sample exams and answers and supplemental materials on many topics, are available only on the TWEN site.
- Introduction to the Course, Fall 2005
- Course Syllabus and Reading Assignments, Fall 2005
- Student Introduction Form
- Introduction: What is a Tort?
- Introduction: An outline of the issues in Torts
- Introduction: Tort and Its Competitors (chart)
- Introduction: What is a tort?
- Introduction: Central problems in tort
- Class 2: Stages of a Lawsuit
- Class 3-4: Causation and Fault Outline
- Class 4-5: Battery Outline
- Gray Areas and Ambiguous Pictures
- Leichtman: Battery, pollution and statistical torts
- The Problem of Corporate (Statistical) Torts
- Do Corporations Have A Fiduciary Duty To Commit Torts?
- The Five Fingers of Negligence
- James Surowiecki, Don't Do The Math, The New Yorker (1/23/2005). Why juries punish companies that do cost-benefit analyses.
- Ronald Coase: The Problem of Social Cost (1960): From JSTOR (on campus). Off-campus, use this link; then search Coase: (JSTOR, off-campus, requires UNID). For commentary, see:
- Mark Kelman, Consumption Theory, Production Theory, and Ideology in the Coase Theorem, 52 S. Cal. L. Rev. 669 (1978-1979). From Hein-on-Line (on campus). Off-campus, use this link; then search Kelman: (Hein-on-Line off-campus, requires UNID). A trenchant critique of simple versions of the Coase theorem emphasizing the assumptions that opportunity costs equal real costs and that wealth distribution doesn't matter.
- David Friedman, Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why it Matters (entire book on-line) -- chapters 2-6, 8-9, 14 are most relevant to this course. An elegant restating and application of the Coase theorem by a believer. Watch the simplifying assumptions!
- Law Matters: A Critique of the Coase Theorem
- Palsgraff: The facts. For more information on the facts of Palsgraff -- suggesting that Cardozo interpreted them interestingly -- see:
- John T. Noonan, Jr., Persons and Masks of the Law: Cardozo, Holmes, Jefferson, and Wythe as Makers of the Masks (1976).
- William H. Manz, Palsgraff: Cardozo's Urban Legend?, 107 Dickinson L. Rev 785 (2003). From Hein-on-line (on campus). Off-campus, use this link; then search Manz: (Hein-on-Line off-campus, requires UNID).
- Palsgraff: The Pictures
- Palsgraff: The Curse?
- An Action/Inaction Problem: vaccinations. WSJ article on vaccinations and my comments.
- Manipulating your insurance pool to externalize medical costs: The Walmarts Board Memo
- Malcolm Gladwell, The Moral Hazard Myth: The bad idea behind our failed health system, The New Yorker (8/29/05). Differing ways in which insurance systems can spread costs, and why one might choose one system over another. If the link fails, use an on-campus computer.
- John Goodman, Health Care in a Free Society: Rebutting the Myths of National Health Insurance (Cato Institute Policy Analysis 2005). A libertarian defense of the status quo American health care financing system.
- My preliminary reactions to Gladwell and Goodman.
- Michael Marmot, Status Syndrome: A Challenge to Medicine, 295 JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association) 1304-1307 (2006)
and James Banks, Michael Marmot, et al., Disease and Disadvantage in the U.S. and the U.K., 295 JAMA 2037-2045 (2006).
Neither tort, insurance, access to medical care, diet nor exercise seem to explain the poorer health of American whites relative to British whites, leaving social stratification as the leading proposed causal difference. For more on this topic, see Richard J. Wilkinson, Mind the Gap: Hierarchies, Health and Human Evolution (Yale 2001). - Understanding Respondeat Superior
- A Note on Respondeat Superior and Coaseian Cost Shifting
- Edgewater Motels: All of Torts in One Case
- Nuisance, or the causation problem in strict liability
- Rational Discrimination in Insurance (and elsewhere): Accurate Tests Give Inaccurate Results With Low Background Probabilities
- Atul Gawande, The Malpractice Mess, The New Yorker (11/14/2005). A doctor's impression of how the malpractice system works in practice. Note that he is entirely unaware of the "standard of care" principles we studied in class.
- Additional comments from Atul Gawande on how the malpractice system really works and some alternatives that might work better.
- Understanding Tort Punitive Damages
- Bad Arguments In Tort
- Comparing conventional and economic analyses of tort law: see guidelines for response to Question 3, Final Exam '04 (on TWEN)