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RonMazorFirstPaper 12 - 26 Feb 2010 - Main.RonMazor
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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| | | Yes. | |
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< | Why Reasonableness And Negligence Have No Place In Tort | >
> | Damage Without Compensation is a Bad Way to Conduct Tort Law | | | Somehow, in the smoke and fire of industrialization, American jurisprudence lost sight of an ancient truth. Tort is not about blame, but harm. It is about making injured people whole, as best as the law can approximate. It shouldn't matter that, by all accounts, you built a really safe and professional backyard batting cage. If you hit a ball and cripple Little Timmy from across the street, it shouldn't be that Little Timmy has to pay out of pocket for a lifetime of corrective surgery and physical therapy. Yet, that's how negligence works.
Theoretically, your almost-effective batting cage excuses you from liability. Because you tried to make it safe, and took a "reasonable" level of precaution, Little Timmy is not able to recover from you. That you can do harm and not be negligent seems to demand a redefinition of negligence. But as it stands, Little Timmy has to swallow the cost of his injury so you can enjoy your "right" to practice your swing. He pays a leg, and you get to enjoy your freedom to participate in semi-dangerous behavior with impunity. In essence, our society has decided it's better to shift costs to the random injured individual than to stifle free enterprise with the occasional award of monetary damages. | |
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< | Damage without compensation is a bad way to conduct tort law | | | It should not be a controversial proposition that the law should compensate a person who, through no fault of his own, is injured by the acts of another. It is a travesty that "reasonableness" and negligence subvert this fundamental standard.
In the past, if a court failed to do justice, people had private means to rectify the problem. What changed from the Middle Ages to the present day is the monopoly of force and the centralized power of law. In modern civilization, private people no longer retain much power. They have entrusted the force of society to the courts. | |
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< | Yet, courts are fallible, and they bind themselves to their mistakes. Bad precedent, once accepted, can create perpetual injustice. The result? A century of negligence, even though tying compensation for damage to the reasonable conduct of the damager leaves the equally reasonable damaged party drifting in the wind. | >
> | Yet, courts are fallible, and they bind themselves to their mistakes. Bad precedent, once accepted, can create perpetual injustice. The result? A century of negligence and the "reasonableness" standard, even though tying compensation for damage to the reasonable conduct of the damager leaves the equally reasonable victim drifting in the wind. | | | Strict Liability Would Work in the Real World |
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| Revision 12 | r12 - 26 Feb 2010 - 01:54:13 - RonMazor |
| Revision 11 | r11 - 25 Feb 2010 - 23:17:00 - RonMazor |
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