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The Moral Dimensions of Tort Law
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15661 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1989 |
4,760 Words |
| Author
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G. Edward White
G. Edward White is the John B. Minor Professor of Law and
History at the University of Virginia. |
For many persons tort law may conjure up a world far removed from moral issues: the world of automobile accidents, defective products, toxic waste, and the "insurance crisis." But from its origins tort law has been concerned with a fundamental moral question, the question of answerability for a perceived "wrong." The word tort itself simply means "wrong" in Norman French, although the subject of torts has come to take on a more specialized compass, that of civil wrongs not arising out of contractual relations. Even that definition is not quite accurate, for some acts that are crimes are also torts, such as assaults or violations of criminal statutes, and some torts arise out of a contract context, such as unfair competition or interference with contractual relations.
Indeed, on first impression tort law may appear an extraordinarily diverse, even chaotic field, encompassing newspaper articles that allegedly injure the reputations of their subjects, suits against asbestos manufacturers by persons exposed to asbestos dust over a long period, alleged beatings of criminal suspects by the police, and claims that psychiatrists negligently failed to warn potential victims of their patients. But all of these actions have something in common: All stem from a claim that one person has "injured" another and should be made answerable to the victim.
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The diversity and moral complexity of tort law derives from the multiple connotations of "wrong" and "injury" that the subject embraces. On one end of a continuum lie injuries that seem obviously tangible and real: the loss of limbs or functions resulting from automobile crashes, from exposure to dangerous machines, or from the side-effects of dangerous drugs or defective medical procedures. On the other end lie the more intangible injuries of hurt feelings, humiliation, invasion of privacy, disparagement, and fear for the safety of others. Tort law encompasses both sets of injuries, and thus sometimes, in exploring whether a "wrong" has been committed, tests not only the responsibility of persons towards others but the credibility of those who claim to have been injured. Sometimes the defendants in a tort case is a corporation, like the Ford Motor Company in suits raised by owners of Pintos or the A.H. Robins Company or in suits brought by users of the Dalkon Shield. In some cases, it has been shown that a corporation not only has known its product was dangerous but has deliberately concluded it was "better off," in a costs-benefits sense, by leaving the product on the market and paying off an occasional claim. In such cases the scale of moral accountability seems to have
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