Andrew Ritchie, ‘Dishonesty and exaggeration: is there a middle way to deal with this conduct in PI and clinical negligence claims?’

18 April 2026 | Author: steve

INTRODUCTION
Fraud comes in many forms in PI and clin neg cases. For RTA claims, motor insurers have given evidence to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee that they estimate £2 billion pa is lost to fraud each year. In 2006 an Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) was established to fight fraud by combining and collating data and to analyse it. ‘Cash for crash’ gangs who fake RTAs led to the IFB obtaining its 500th fraud conviction by 2017. The IFB works with the National Crime Agency to stamp out such frauds. An Insurance Task Force was set up. Initially, claimant lawyer organisations were not involved but later they became involved. Lawyers on both sides have a common moral and financial interest in rejecting fraudulent claims. After the Big Bang in the 1980s and the deregulation of legal services advertising, claims farmers who advertised aggressively and netted potential customers, sold those potential claims on to lawyers. Eventually, these farmers were regulated, and fraudulent claims were reduced …

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Mr Justice Ritchie, ‘Dishonesty and exaggeration: is there a middle way to deal with this conduct in PI and clinical negligence claims? Or must we apply an on-off switch?’ (Personal Injury Bar Association Annual Richard Davies Lecture, 13th November 2025) [2026] Journal of Personal Injury Law (1) 3-21.

Posted in Negligence, Personal Injuries, Remedies and Procedure, Tort | Leave a Comment

William Latimer-Sayer and others, ‘Reducing re-traumatisation of claimants in medico-legal litigation: a framework for reform’

18 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
Life-changing traumatic injuries not only cause profound physical trauma but may also create psychological and emotional responses that can be reactivated during medico-legal assessments. This paper examines the neurobiological basis of trauma responses, including hippocampal downregulation and amygdala-driven memory formation, which create fragmented, emotionally laden memories, that are susceptible to triggers such as reliving the index events. The current litigation process requires the gathering of expert evidence, which often prompts the repeated recounting of traumatic events across multiple assessments. This may exacerbate post-traumatic stress symptoms and impede the claimant’s recovery. We propose five recommendations to minimise the potential for re-traumatisation in catastrophic injury litigation: comprehensive background documentation in expert instructions, careful expert review of records before assessment, thoughtful history taking that avoids questions regarding the index traumatic events unless there is a clear need to ask them, better training for experts who may need to question vulnerable claimants regarding traumatic events, and reframing assessments to focus on current presentation rather than traumatic history. These reforms aim to balance the need for thorough evidenced reports with the claimant’s wellbeing, reducing avoidable psychological harm whilst maintaining litigation integrity.

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William Latimer-Sayer KC and others, ‘Reducing re-traumatisation of claimants in medico-legal litigation: a framework for reform’ [2026] Journal of Personal Injury Law (1) 53-58.

Posted in Personal Injuries, Remedies and Procedure, Tort | Leave a Comment

Amy Gajda, ‘Campbell at twenty: Campbell’s sensibilities and information privacy in the United States’

18 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
This article considers the intriguing question of whether a Naomi Campbell-like claim for invasion of privacy could ever be a winnable one in the United States. While the short answer is no, the longer answer is considerably more nuanced. The article explores the way a Hollywood lawyer might bring such a privacy claim despite First Amendment protections for media, and why that lawyer likely would not be sanctioned for frivolity.

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Amy Gajda, Campbell at twenty: Campbell’s sensibilities and information privacy in the United States, Journal of Media Law. Published online: 16 April 2026.

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Juliet-Nil Uraz, ‘Legal Aid in England and Wales: A Historical and Budgetary Perspective’

18 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
This paper traces the evolution of state intervention in legal aid provision in England and Wales from the 15th century in forma pauperis statute to the present day, revealing a non-linear trajectory from charity to comprehensive welfare provision and back toward restricted access. Employing a process tracing methodology and drawing on legislative histories, government reports, and a manually reconstructed budgetary time-series covering the fiscal years 1949/50 to 2024/25, the analysis documents how legal aid transformed from voluntary provision for paupers into a cornerstone of the postwar welfare state by 1949, before experiencing severe retrenchment. The paper identifies three critical junctures: the 1949 Legal Aid Act which established universal access as a democratic principle; the 1972-1986 golden period of expanded provision into social welfare law; and the 2012 LASPO reforms, which removed entire areas of law from scope, triggering provider closures and creating legal aid deserts. The original budget reconstruction demonstrates that while recent cuts have been justified as austerity measures, they represent a fundamental reconceptualisation of legal aid, from a social right available to 80% of the population at inception to a residual safety net covering less than 25%, a shift that has been obscured by fragmented data and inconsistent measurement methodologies. The paper contributes both a consolidated historical narrative and a novel fiscal dataset to an under-documented area of welfare state scholarship.

Uraz, Juliet-Nil, Legal Aid in England and Wales: A Historical and Budgetary Perspective (March 31, 2026).

Posted in Legal History, Remedies and Procedure | Leave a Comment

Ciani and Pagallo, ‘No Peace After Death? The Impact of AI-Driven Memorial Chatbots on Privacy and Data Protection’

18 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
This paper examines the profitable digital afterlife industry (DAI), whose aim is to monetize the digital remains of departed internet users. Among the different services offered by such an industry, attention is drawn to AI and humanoid robots that create convincing digital surrogates of the deceased. A decade ago, Google patented robots that can be customizable with personality attributes, and later, Microsoft secured a patent for software that could reincarnate people as a chatbot. By focusing on how these technologies actually work, and in particular, on how software systems collect and process the deceased’s data, the intent is to illustrate the normative challenges of the field, namely, the legal puzzles, moral threats, and uncertainties related to privacy and data protection in the after-death governance of cyberspace.

Ciani, Jacopo and Pagallo, Ugo, No Peace After Death? The Impact of AI-Driven Memorial Chatbots on Privacy and Data Protection (January 1, 2025).

Posted in Defamation and Privacy, European Private Law | Leave a Comment

Katy Barnett, ‘The Australian Approach to Crypto Assets: Another Block in the Chain’

18 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
This article considers the current Australian doctrinal position with regard to the proprietary nature of crypto assets in the light of recent decisions by State Supreme courts. It discusses the policy ramifications of propertising crypto assets, and why the decision in Re Blockchain Tech Pty Ltd is correct to find that Australian law does not need to follow the English practice of recognising a tertium quid but should conceive of crypto assets as a chose in action. It also discusses the doctrinal nature of tracing as a process to aid in the location and recovery of property, and the way in which this might work in a crypto asset context in Australian law. It is concluded that tracing is possible, but that in complex cases, particularly those involving fraud, crypto assets may give rise to both conceptual and factual issues which make tracing difficult.

Barnett, Katy, The Australian Approach to Crypto Assets: Another Block in the Chain (March 27, 2026).

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Constantine Yannelis, ‘Adam Smith, Human Capital and the Wealth of Nations’

17 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
This essay examines Smith’s insights into human capital as a primary driver of the wealth of nations. Adam Smith is celebrated as the founder of classical economics, yet his foundational role in articulating the principles of human capital is frequently overlooked. Writing in 1776, Smith predated the formal coining of ‘human capital’ by centuries, yet he clearly identified human skills, education, and health as analogous physical capital. Smith compared educated individuals to expensive machinery, and analyzed how specialization and training drive productivity, and showed prescient understanding of market dynamics such as supply, demand, and wage premiums. Smith further showed sophisticated views regarding the merits of public education. Although a proponent of markets, he acknowledged externalities in education and supported limited public intervention. By synthesizing Smith’s observations with modern economic frameworks, this work argues that Smith is an intellectual progenitor of human capital theory, recognizing that a nation’s prosperity depends fundamentally on the cultivation of human abilities.

Yannelis, Constantine, Adam Smith, Human Capital and the Wealth of Nations (April 1, 2026).

Posted in Law and Economics, Legal History | Leave a Comment

Borg and Sant, ‘Data scraping for scientific research purposes: legal bases under the GDPR’

17 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
In research contexts, data scraping enables systematic collection of large-scale, real-world digital data. This article examines data scraping for research that is publicly funded or carried out in pursuit of public interest objectives, from the perspective of data protection law. It focuses on the GDPR requirement to identify a legal basis in order to ensure lawful processing. The analysis assesses the appropriateness of reliance on the lawful bases in Article 6(1), and possible derogations in Article 9(2) GDPR. It then considers (i) whether the said processing could benefit from the GDPR’s derogations for scientific research and (ii) whether exemptions relating to academic expression under Article 85 GDPR apply. The article concludes that the GDPR does not currently provide a readily-available legal basis for research carried out in the public interest. It argues that future sector-specific legislation could provide legal certainty and reconcile the protection of personal data with the advancement of scientific research in an increasingly digital environment. The findings underscore the need for harmonised interpretations and best practices that balance transparency and accountability with the legitimate pursuit of scientific progress, thereby promoting a coherent and ethically responsible approach to the use of online data in research.

Roxanne Meilak Borg and Mireille M Sant, Data scraping for scientific research purposes: legal bases under the GDPR, International Review of Law, Computers & Technology. Published online: 16 April 2026.

Posted in Defamation and Privacy, European Private Law | Leave a Comment

Sarah Morath, ‘Our Microplastic Problem’

17 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
This article explores the growing threat of and the legal response to microplastic pollution. Microplastics – plastic particles less than five millimeters in size – are pervasive, persistent, and chemically diverse, making them particularly difficult to regulate using existing environmental statutes. Federal approaches, such as the Clean Water Act and Toxic Substances Control Act, offer limited relief, while macro-scale proposals like the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act remain stalled. In response, this article advocates for ‘micro-solutions’ – targeted, state and local interventions that collectively address microplastic pollution across the plastic lifecycle. These include bans on intentionally added microplastics, filtration mandates for appliances, stormwater management strategies, and industry-specific regulations. Drawing lessons from climate and PFAS litigation, the article also examines the increasing use of consumer protection and public nuisance claims against plastic producers. In highlighting these bottom-up strategies, the article provides a roadmap for meaningful progress in the absence of sweeping federal or international reform.

Morath, Sarah, Our Microplastic Problem (March 15, 2026).

Posted in Land use and Environment, Products liability, Tort | Leave a Comment

Joshua Yuvaraj, ‘Recentering Creativity in Copyright’

17 April 2026 | Author: steve

ABSTRACT
Copyright discourse often centers around creativity; as a rationale for copyright, and as a threshold for copyright to subsist in songs, books, art and other creative works. Yet creativity remains an ethereal concept: if we do not know what it means, we cannot evaluate whether copyright law is promoting it, nor can we properly understand what it means for a work to be ‘creative’ where that is required for copyright to subsist. An emerging strand of copyright discourse seeks to respond by examining scientific insights into the cognitive process of creativity to highlight how copyright law should be reshaped to cultivate it. In this paper I develop that scholarship with an ontological analysis of copyright’s relationship with creativity. Drawing on a recent meta-theory of creativity research, I demonstrate how creativity is phenomenological; that is, sociocultural and environmental factors are as important to creativity as individual cognitive processes. I then show that copyright law does not easily cohere with this phenomenological view of creativity: it has no role in some elements and is structured as to stymy others. While this analysis adds a further basis to the argument that we should not consider copyright law as a creativity-promoting legal framework, I use social contract theory to show that copyright can be regarded as having a secondary, facilitative role in the phenomenon of creativity. This analysis provides the theoretical framework for further research in three areas: (a) it challenges copyright expansionism; (b) it encourages examination of avenues to promote creativity beyond copyright law; and (c) it suggests the provision of property rights in respect of intellectual creations under copyright law should be revisited.

Yuvaraj, Joshua, Recentering Creativity in Copyright, IP Theory, volume 15, issue 2, article 4 (2026).

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