Category Archives: Causation
‘Cruise Ship Covid Suits Show High Bar for Pinpointing Exposure’
“The limited success of cruise line Covid-19 lawsuits showcases the high bar consumers must meet to hold businesses liable for alleged virus exposure, suggesting they can overcome legal hurdles – but only in the right circumstances. Cruise ship passengers filed at least 42 lawsuits in federal court alleging injuries – ranging from emotional distress to […]
Alex Chan, ‘In Defence of AIB v Mark Redler’
ABSTRACT Following Target Holdings v Redferns and AIB v Mark Redler, it is now common theme that equitable compensation is underpinned by a compensatory mindset requiring but-for causation. This article argues that, despite criticisms that the compensatory reasoning does not sit well with the orthodoxy, the law has moved on. The traditional accounting mechanism should […]
‘The Legacy of the Mothers of Srebrenica Case’: special Issue of the Utrecht Journal of International and European Law
Introduction: Special Issue ‘The Legacy of the Mothers of Srebrenica Case’ (Cedric Ryngaert and Kushtrim Istrefi) Mothers of Srebrenica: Causation and Partial Liability under Dutch Tort Law (Rianka Rijnhout) The Right to Life in the Mothers of Srebrenica Case: Reversing the Positive Obligation to Protect from the Duty of Means to that of a Result […]
‘Legal Theory Lexicon: Causation’
“Causation is one of the basic conceptual tools of legal analysis. And for most purposes, we can get along with a notion of causation that is both vague and ambiguous. In the world of medium sized physical objects (automobiles, pedestrians, etc), our judgments about causation rarely depend on conceptual niceties. The driver’s negligence caused the […]
Stuart-Smith and others, ‘Filling the evidentiary gap in climate litigation’
ABSTRACT Lawsuits concerning the impacts of climate change make causal claims about the effect of defendants’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on plaintiffs and have proliferated around the world. Plaintiffs have sought, inter alia, compensation for climate-related losses and to compel governments to reduce their GHG emissions. So far, most of these claims have been unsuccessful. […]
Louise Austin, ‘Correia, Diamond and the Chester Exception: Vindicating Patient Autonomy?’
ABSTRACT In Chester v Afshar [2004], the House of Lords stated they were departing from the traditional rules of causation in order to vindicate the patient’s right of autonomy. Subsequent judgments in the Court of Appeal expressed concerns over the lack of clarity of the legal principles to be derived from that judgment. In Correia […]
Remington Slama, ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance: An Examination of the Loss of Chance Doctrine Under Nebraska Law’
ABSTRACT This Comment examines the loss of chance doctrine and its different permutations. It argues that Nebraska should adopt the ‘distinct compensable injury’ approach to the loss of chance doctrine to allow patients to recover damages when their original chance of survival or better outcome is less than 50%. Nebraska should adopt this form of […]
Justin Sytsma, ‘The Responsibility Account’
ABSTRACT There is now a great deal of evidence that norm violations impact people’s causal judgments. But it remains contentious how best to explain these findings. This includes that the primary explanations on offer differ with regard to how broad they take the phenomenon to be. In this chapter, I detail how the explanations diverge […]
Carlo Vittorio Giabardo, ‘Climate Change Litigation and Tort Law: Regulation Through Litigation?’
ABSTRACT Protecting our climate is a legal obligation. So, people – whether individually or in aggregate forms – are seeking reliefs for climate damages in courts (‘climate change litigation’). States, governments, supranational entities and heavily-polluting corporations are increased called to account before courts for their (in)action or for their direct contribution in causing the global […]
Samuel Castan Blashki, ‘“What World Are We Imagining?”: Counterfactual Reasoning and the “But For” Test in Lewis v ACT’
ABSTRACT Counterfactual causal analysis raises fundamental philosophical questions with far-reaching practical implications for the assessment of compensatory damages. Australian courts frequently skirt around this vexed issue rather than pursuing a coherent, principled approach. The High Court has recently provided much-needed practical guidance on the operation of counterfactuals and the ‘but for’ test. This case note […]