Strict Liability Versus Negligence

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to compare negligence rules and strict liability rules and to examine the allocative effects resulting from the application of different liability regimes. It first discusses unilateral accidents, while the more complicated bilateral cases follow afterwards. Each section starts with a discussion of the rule of no liability before moving on to various forms of negligence and ending with various strict liability rules. At the end of each section, there is a discussion on how results change when relaxing specific assumptions. The various aspects are summarised focusing on the question of whether the outcome under a specific liability regime is efficient or not. We also discuss a few more specific topics of interest, for example, the allocative effects of various liability rules when agents enter into a contractual relationship, cases of 'joint liability', the impact of uncertain legal standards, and the interaction between liability law and insurance. JEL classification: K0

Joint Functional Focus of Models of Civil Liability for Damage Inflicted on Patients

“…Insurance relations are extremely closely connected with the relations of civil liability (first of all, tort, and in some cases also contractual relations). Among other things, it is here that the main legal framework for the implementation of enhanced -independent from the obligor's fault -compensatory protection of the victim is developed (Schäfer and Müller-Langer 2008). Given the above-mentioned definition of property consequences of violations of patients' rights, alternative guarantees of protection of the interests of both injured consumers of medical services and providers of the latter -medical institutions and private medical practitioners -are gaining great importance.…”

Privatising Climate Policy

“…In the UK, legislative revision might be needed, essentially to reverse the effective replacement of the law of nuisance by the law of negligence (Morris, 2008). There is a substantial literature on the issue of strict liability versus negligence (Schäfer, 2000; Schäfer and Schönenberger, 2000), which is beyond the scope of this paper to survey. The principle of strict liability and the law of nuisance focus on causality (Cordato, 2004; Hoppe, 2004; Morris, 2008) and it is precisely the question whether the human use of fossil fuels causes global warming that is at issue.…”

Tort Liability and Unawareness

“…As such, we contribute to the tort law and economics literature and to the unawareness literature, both of which are too vast to review here. Surveys of the tort law and economics literature, which was pioneered by Brown (1973), 5 include Shavell (2007), Schäfer and Müller-Langer (2009), and more recently Arlen (2017). Surveys of the unawareness literature, which was pioneered by Fagin and Halpern (1988), 6 include Schipper (2014) (which o¤ers a "gentle introduction") and Schipper (2015) (which provides an extended review).…”