Double-edged torts

Abstract

Many tort cases are characterized by two interrelated elements: "role uncertainty", which occurs when individuals take precautions ignorant of their roles in future accidents and availability of "dual-effect precautions", which reduce both the probability of an individual becoming an injurer and the probability that the same individual will become a victim of someone else's negligence. In this paper, we extend the traditional model to account for role-uncertainty and dual-effect precautions. We find that in these situations, the traditional formulation of Negligence fails to incentivize efficient precautions, inducing excessive role-specific precautions and insufficient dual-effect precautions. For such cases, we argue for a modification of the standard of due care that accounts for the full benefit of dual-effect precautions, in order to incentivize efficient precautionary efforts.

Liability for Robots II: An Economic Analysis

“…10 As the probability of symmetrical use arises (where both the injurer and victim use robots), the efficient standard of care will tend to be greater than in the unilateral use case (where only the injurer is using a robot). This directly follows from Luppi et al (2016).…”

Sharing Residual Liability: The Cheapest Cost Avoider Revisited

“…Although starting from different assumptions and purposes, the results of Dari-Mattiacci and De Geest (2005) are complementary to ours: they argue that if the costs of precautions are larger than the value of the harm, there exists some sharing of the loss that yields a lower level of social loss than all-or-nothing rules (see the discussion on the riskiness of activities in Section 4.1). Luppi, Parisi, and Pi (2016) formulate the traditional tort model in terms of expected loss sharing-instead of actual loss sharing as in our formulation-to account for individual role uncertainty. They argue that, under conditions of uncertainty, activity-level incentives are insensitive to changes in liability regime.…”

Liability for robots II: an economic analysis

“…10 As the probability of symmetrical use arises (where both the injurer and victim use robots), the efficient standard of care will tend to be greater than in the unilateral use case (where only the injurer is using a robot). This directly follows fromLuppi et al (2016).Journal of Institutional Economics…”