This chapter discusses the duties and liabilities of the company’s auditors and its promoters. The duties of auditors derive from contract and tort. Promoters may also owe duties in contract and tort, but their more significant duties are imposed in equity, and map very closely the duties owed by the company’s directors.
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This chapter discusses the duties and liabilities of the company’s auditors. These duties derive from contract, tort and statute.
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Celebrated for their conceptual clarity, titles in the Clarendon Law Series offer concise, accessible overviews of major fields of law and legal thought. This chapter deals with the tort of conversion. Conversion is best regarded as the tort which protects the owner of goods not against their being damaged (negligence covers that) but against their being dealt with or detained against his will. It is concerned with loss of goods rather than damage to them. The chapter discusses what goods can be converted; what entitlements the claimant in conversion must show; liability in conversion; remedies, such as the return of the goods or damages or both; and length of protection provided to the legal owner of goods.
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This chapter discusses the following: the duty concept and the elements of the tort of negligence; formulating the duty of care; kinds of damage; the manner of infliction; and the way in which the notion of duty confines liability by reference to the nature of the parties involved.
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Craig Purshouse
Essential Cases: Tort Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. Essential Cases provides you with succinct summaries of some of the landmark and most influential cases in tort law. Each summary begins with a review of the main case facts and decision. The summary is then concluded with expert commentary on the case from the author, Craig Purshouse, including his assessment of the wider questions raised by the decision.
Book
Craig Purshouse
Essential Cases: Tort Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. Essential Cases provides you with succinct summaries of some of the landmark and most influential cases in tort law. Each summary begins with a review of the main case facts and decision. The summary is then concluded with expert commentary on the case from the author, Craig Purshouse, including his assessment of the wider questions raised by the decision.
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Jenny Steele
All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. Tort Law: Text, Cases, and Materials combines incisive commentary with carefully selected extracts from primary and secondary materials to provide a balance of support and encouragement. This volume starts by introducing the fundamental principles of the subject before moving on to discuss more challenging issues, hoping to encourage a full understanding of the subject and an appreciation of the more complex debates surrounding the law of tort. The text starts by providing an overview. Various torts are then arranged along a spectrum from intentional torts, through negligence, to stricter liabilities. Also considered are issues relating to damages, compensation, limitation, and vicarious liability. After introducing intentional torts, the book looks at the tort of negligence. Chapters also cover nuisance and duties relating to land and defamation and privacy. Finally, stricter liabilities are examined such as product liability.
Book
Jenny Steele
All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. Tort Law: Text, Cases, and Materials combines incisive commentary with carefully selected extracts from primary and secondary materials to provide a balance of support and encouragement. This volume starts by introducing the fundamental principles of the subject before moving on to discuss more challenging issues, hoping to encourage a full understanding of the subject and an appreciation of the more complex debates surrounding the law of tort. The text starts by providing an overview. Various torts are then arranged along a spectrum from intentional torts, through negligence, to stricter liabilities. Also considered are issues relating to damages, compensation, limitation, and vicarious liability. After introducing intentional torts, the book looks at the tort of negligence. Chapters also cover nuisance and duties relating to land and defamation and privacy. Finally, stricter liabilities are examined such as product liability.
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This chapter examines the doctrine of vicarious liability. It explains that vicarious liability is not a tort in its own right, but is a means whereby a party can be held liable for the tortious acts of another. Vicarious liability can arise through a number of relationships, the most common being that of employer and employee. The traditional requirements for vicarious liability are discussed, namely (i) the existence of an employer–employee relationship; (ii) the employee must have committed a tort; and (iii) the tort must have been committed in the course of the employer’s business. Finally, the chapter looks at defences available to an employer who has been held vicariously liable for the acts of an employee.
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Partners will incur debts and other obligations in the course of carrying on the partnership’s business. This chapter examines the nature of the partners’ liabilities in these circumstances and the extent to which an individual partner can bind the partnership as a whole. It then considers whether it is possible for individuals who are not partners at the time the debt or obligation was incurred to be liable for that debt or obligation.
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Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. This introductory chapter explains how contract law is structured and how it fits into the overall scheme of the law of obligations and into English law more generally. It explains the boundaries between contract law, torts and unjust enrichment and restitution. It also explains the wider range of situations covered by the law of contract, and puts the law of contract into its social and economic context.
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Celebrated for their conceptual clarity, titles in the Clarendon Law Series offer concise, accessible overviews of major fields of law and legal thought. This chapter considers cases involving several torts and severable persons who are liable. It describes ‘joint and several liability’, where several different torts may be contributing to the same harm and several persons are liable for what they have independently done, since in principle, everyone whose tortious conduct has contributed to the occurrence of harm is liable to be sued for the full amount of that harm, provided it is indivisible and not too remote. The chapter also discusses how a tortfeasor who is sued and wishes to claim contribution should bring any other supposed tortfeasor into the victim's suit. Likewise, the victim should sue every plausible tortfeasor, because if he brings a second action in respect of the same damage he risks being penalised in costs, and if he loses against one defendant and succeeds against another, he will get all his costs paid by the latter.
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This chapter discusses three key defences in the tort of negligence: voluntary assumption of risk (consent or volenti non fit injuria), contributory negligence and illegality. The defence of voluntary assumption of risk is based on the common-sense notion that ‘one who has invited or assented to an act being done towards him cannot, when he suffers it, complain of it as a wrong’. The defence of illegality denies recovery to certain claimants injured while committing unlawful activities. Contributory negligence is a defence that operates not to defeat the claimant’s claim entirely but rather to reduce the amount of damages the defendant must pay.
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This chapter examines the principle of vicarious liability, a form of secondary liability through which employers may, in certain circumstances, be liable for the torts of their employees, even though the employer themselves may be entirely blameless. The imposition of vicarious liability is one of the most important exceptions to the general approach of the common law whereby liability for any wrongdoing is imposed on, and only on, the wrongdoer(s). A defendant will not be vicariously liable unless the following conditions are met: (a) there is an employer–employee relationship between the defendant and the person for whose actions they are being held liable; (b) the employee committed the tortious act while acting in the course of their employment.
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Private nuisance is defined as any substantial and unreasonable interference with the claimant’s land, or with his rights to peaceful enjoyment of that land and any right that exists in connection with it. It need not result from ‘direct’ or ‘intentional’ interference; it is sufficient that the defendant have ‘adopted or continued’ a state of affairs that constitutes an unreasonable interference. This chapter discusses the basis of liability in private nuisance; the concept of unreasonable interference and the difference between this concept and the notion of ‘reasonableness’ in negligence; who can sue and who can be sued; defences; and remedies. It also discusses, in outline, public nuisance; the relationship between nuisance and other forms of liability; and nuisance and protection of the environment.
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Celebrated for their conceptual clarity, titles in the Clarendon Law Series offer concise, accessible overviews of major fields of law and legal thought. This chapter deals with the tort of nuisance, which is concerned exclusively with land. Nuisance embraces all the multifarious rights and interests appertaining to land — that extremely distinctive form of property whose characteristics include uniqueness, durability, fixity, contiguity, visibility, and short supply. Some such rights are natural, others must be acquired; some are absolute, others qualified; some depend on physical possession, others, such as easements, do not. One of these rights is the right to enjoy one's land. The chapter discusses how the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) can affect the landowner or occupier; cases where a defendant is held liable for failing to protect his neighbour; the nature of the occupier's duty; disamenity as the characteristic of nuisance law; and whether a landlord is liable for a nuisance committed by a tenant.
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Celebrated for their conceptual clarity, titles in the Clarendon Law Series offer concise, accessible overviews of major fields of law and legal thought. This chapter discusses the tort of trespass, which protects and vindicates the basic rights of the citizen against deliberate, even well-meaning, invasion, whether or not any damage is caused. Every positive act which directly invades one of those basic rights is trespassory, and leads to liability unless it is justified in law. The chapter distinguishes between the tort of negligence and the tort of trespass. It then describes the rights protected by the tort of trespass: freedom of movement, bodily integrity, and property in one's possession. It also explains the right to trespass and the rights of trespassers.
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All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter introduces the reader to tort law, with emphasis on its principles of liability and the approach taken to the interaction between parties. It first maps the various types of torts, including torts of strict liability and torts requiring intention, and the nature of the ‘wrongs’ with which they are concerned, in terms of protected interests, relevant ‘conduct’, and whether the tort requires ‘actual’ or ‘material’ damage. The chapter concludes by discussing two current challenges to the law of tort: ‘compensation culture’ and the costs of tort, and the influence of the Human Rights Act 1998.
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All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter deals with remedies, particularly monetary remedies, and remedial issues in relation to torts. Before discussing compensation and responsibility, it first considers the heads of loss for which damages in tort may be awarded, and some serious conceptual difficulties involved with this. It then looks at the potential for non-compensatory awards and the challenge to tort law represented by the growth of damages under the Human Rights Act 1998. It also assesses recent developments with respect to the assessment and delivery of damages, the funding of litigation, and the relationship between tort damages and welfare support.
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This introductory chapter begins by providing examples of torts. It then discusses the aims of the law of torts, the most significant being compensation and deterrence. Part of the justification for a tort is that it identifies what actions should be avoided and deters people from engaging in them. It is essential to know that action is wrongful, but a tort action may over-deter or under-deter. It may over-deter where the perception of the chance of liability is exaggerated. It may under-deter where either the chances of somebody suing to enforce their rights are small, or where the consequences to the individual tortfeasor may be slight. Originally tort was about ‘shifting’ or ‘transferring’ the loss from the victim to the defendant (corrective justice). The defendant themselves paid compensation to the victim. However, those days are gone and we are now in an era of ‘loss distribution’. In other words, it is not the defendant himself who pays, but it will be their, or their employer’s, insurer. The chapter then considers the study of torts. Tort law is almost wholly a case-driven subject and therefore a good knowledge of the cases and what they stand for is essential. The chapter presents three steps to studying cases.
