Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- 1 Introduction: the mapping of legal concepts
- 2 Johanna Wagner and the rival opera houses
- 3 Liability for economic harms
- 4 Reliance
- 5 Liability for physical harms
- 6 Profits derived from wrongs
- 7 Domestic obligations
- 8 Interrelation of obligations
- 9 Property and obligation
- 10 Public interest and private right
- 11 Conclusion: the concept of legal mapping
- Works cited
- Index
5 - Liability for physical harms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- 1 Introduction: the mapping of legal concepts
- 2 Johanna Wagner and the rival opera houses
- 3 Liability for economic harms
- 4 Reliance
- 5 Liability for physical harms
- 6 Profits derived from wrongs
- 7 Domestic obligations
- 8 Interrelation of obligations
- 9 Property and obligation
- 10 Public interest and private right
- 11 Conclusion: the concept of legal mapping
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
It follows from the idea of correction of wrongs that compensation is due for injury wrongfully caused to person or property, but the converse proposition, namely that in the absence of wrongdoing there is no liability, cannot be asserted of Anglo-American law without many explanations, qualifications, and exceptions. Frederick Pollock said (1923), with some acerbity, of what he called ‘the dogma of “no liability without fault”’, and which he thought to be ‘more or less prevalent in certain American law schools’, that ‘as an English lawyer I can only say that we never heard of it here. Stated as a general proposition, it is contrary to the whole law of trespass, to much of the law of nuisance, to the whole law of defamation, and to the responsibility of principals for their agents.’ Lord Wright made a similar comment fifteen years later on the same maxim (no liability without fault): ‘That may be regarded as a statement of an ideal of what the law should be, or of the existing law. In the latter sense it is demonstrably inaccurate, whether we look at the old or the modern common law.’ In many kinds of case liability has been imposed for harm to person or property without proof of wrongdoing in the ordinary sense of blameworthy conduct. Since some of these cases have been classed as legal wrongs and some have not, and since writers address themselves to different questions, some historical and some not, and since writers define their own terms, discussion of these matters is laden with terminological, rhetorical, historical, and linguistic difficulties.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dimensions of Private LawCategories and Concepts in Anglo-American Legal Reasoning, pp. 80 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003