A classic treatment of the law relating to compensation for personal injuries, this edition discusses the relevant legal rules as well as the social, political and economic issues underlying the law.

This book applies social context to offer an understanding of the law concerning accidents, personal injury and death.

A man slips on a dance floor and breaks his leg. He recovers damages. A child has both legs amputated as a result of meningitis and is awarded nothing. The law's justification for awarding damages in the first case is that the man's injury was the fault of someone else, while in the second case damages are denied because nobody was at fault. In this searching critique of the present law and practice relating to damages, Professor Patrick Atiyah shows that this system is in fact a lottery. He contends that the public are paying far too much for an unfair and inefficient insurance system and that reform is long overdue. His conclusion is that actions for damages for injuries should be abolished and replaced with a new no-fault road accident scheme, and actions for other injuries should be dealt with by individual or group insurance policies.

The definitive text on personal injury law, now updated to take into account recent significant changes in the law.

Definitive text on personal injury law now updated to take into account recent significant changes in the law.

This ground-breaking book takes a fresh look at potential non-litigation solutions to providing personal injury compensation. It is the first systematic comparative study of such a large number – over forty – of personal injury compensation schemes. It covers the drivers for their creation, the frameworks under which they operate, the criteria and thresholds used, the compensation offered, the claims process, statistics on throughput and costs, and analysis of financial costings. It also considers and compares the successes and failings of these schemes. Many different types of redress providers are studied. These include the comprehensive no-blame coverage offered by the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation; the widely used Patient, Pharmaceutical, Motor Accident and Workers Compensation Insurance systems of the Nordic states; the far smaller issue-focused schemes like the UK Thalidomide and vCJD Trusts; vaccine damage schemes that exist in many countries; as well as motor vehicle schemes from the USA. Conclusions are drawn about the functions, essential requirements, architecture, scope, operation and performance of personal injury compensation systems. The relationships between such schemes, the courts and regulators are also discussed, and both calls and need for reforms are noted. Noting the wide calls for reform of NHS medical negligence litigation within the UK, and its replacement with a no blame approach, the authors' findings outline options for future policy in this area. This major contribution builds on general shifts from courts to ADR, and from blame to no blame in regulation, and is a work that has the potential to have a major impact on the field of personal injury redress. With contributions by Raymond Byrne, Claire Bright, Shuna Mason, Magdalena Tulibacka, Matti Urho, Mary Walker and Herbert Woopen.

Tort Law: A Modern Perspective is an advanced yet accessible introduction to tort law for lawyers, law students, and others. Reflecting the way tort law is taught today, it explains the cases and legal doctrines commonly found in casebooks using modern ideas about public policy, economics, and philosophy. With an emphasis on policy rationales, Tort Law encourages readers to think critically about the justifications for legal doctrines. Although the topic of torts is specific, the conceptual approach should pay dividends to those who are interested broadly in regulatory policy and the role of law. Incorporating three decades of advancements in tort scholarship, Tort Law is the textbook for modern torts classrooms.

G. Edward White's 'Tort Law in America' is regarded as a standard in the field. Concise, accessible and wide-ranging, White's work represents a major work of legal scholarship, providing an enduring intellectual history of American tort law.

This book does what it 'says on the tin' - stating the corpus of tort law as a body of principles. Undertaken for the first time in English tort law, this book describes the law of tort concisely, accessibly, and accurately, and with both depth and detail.