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Homing Devices in Choice of Tort Law: Australian, British, and Canadian Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2008

Abstract

Since 1994, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia have adopted new choice of law rules for cross-border torts that, in different ways, centre on the application of the law of the place where the tort occurred (the lex loci delicti). All three countries abandoned some species of the rule in Phillips v Eyre, which required some reference to the law of the forum (the lex fori) as well as the lex loci delicti. However, predictions were made that, where possible, courts in these countries would continue to show a strong inclination to apply the lex fori in cross-border tort cases—and would use a range of homing devices to do so. A comprehensive survey and analysis of the cases that have been decided under the Australian, British and Canadian lex loci delicti regimes suggests that courts in these countries do betray a homing instinct, but one that has actually been tightly restrained by appeal courts. Where application of the lex fori was formally allowed by use of a ‘flexible exception’ in Canada and the United Kingdom, this has been contained by courts of first appeal. Indeed, only the continuing characterization of the assessment of damages as a procedural question in Canada and the United Kingdom, seems to remain as a significant homing device for courts in these countries.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © British Institute of International and Comparative Law 2006

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References

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145 ibid [24]. Unfortunately, the attempt to impugn the Naval Board's decisions in the Voyager litigation brings us no closer to identifying the locus where all acts of alleged negligence occur on the high seas.

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150 Foreign Limitation Periods Act 1985 (UK) s 1(1) (a); Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1984 (UK) s 23A.

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157 ibid.

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161 The opportunity to treat damages as a question of procedure in a foreign tort case was nevertheless not taken in Neilson v Overseas Projects Corporation of Victoria (2005) 221 ALR 213.Google Scholar

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197 Private International law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1995 (UK) s 12(1).

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