Insurance coverage disputes raise issues in which laws and outcomes regularly vary from state to state. Whether a claim is covered can depend a great deal on whether the case arises on one side of the street or another. It is imperative that insurance claims professionals, lawyers, brokers, risk managers, risk consultants, regulators and judges have adequate access to comparative state-law research. This book is designed to give the stakeholders in the claims process ready access to the law of all 50 states on the most important liability insurance issues to quickly learn and assess state law relevant to coverage disputes. The Second Edition includes nearly 800 new cases covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and adds a new chapter addressing Coverage for Pre-Tender Defense Costs.

In light of the 20th anniversary of the ruling in Francovich, Michael Haba analyzes the principle of Member State Liability, which provides a right to damages whenever EU law is breached by Member States. His research ascertains that the doctrine evolved through three stages before becoming the unified approach that it is today. The author emphasizes that the principle’s base lay at the outset of the EEC, when the ECJ sought means to foster the enforcement of EC law. He shows that although State Liability was introduced in Francovich, there was not enough guidance on its application. He highlights that these matters were resolved in Brasserie/Factortame III, which refined the assessment of culpability, but was inconsistent and had to be further clarified in case law. He illustrates that the doctrine was expanded to breaches of EC law by last instance courts in Köbler. Finally, the author examines if breaches of European competition rules could lead to a right to damages under the principle, but concludes that no fourth stage of State Liability can be established.

This book explores the historical foundations of holding public authorities accountable for their acts, and discusses how and why the idea that the state should or should not be held liable became established in three significant jurisdictions. The issue of state liability for legislative acts is considered one of the most difficult and controversial problems in jurisprudence. This book analyses the development of concepts and institutions of liability for the acts of legislator pertaining to the general principles of state liability until the mid-20th century in the leading European legal systems: Germany, France and Great Britain. It is shown that, in contrast to the prevailing conviction, the lack of liability for law-making instruments was not an unassailable dogma, and that questions as to whether such liability was possible were being asked from the Middle Ages onwards. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of Constitutional Law, Public Law, History of Law, History of Legal and Political Thought, Philosophy of Law, and Comparative Legal Studies.

On-going deterioration of the state of the environment and the continuous risk of an environmental disaster has forced society to reconsider its environmental and developmental objectives. For economic and environmental reasons, the costs of prevention and reparation of environmental harm should be channelled to the polluter. However, such channelling may run counter to legal principles. This work scrutinizes this field of tension between economic and legal principles at state level. It provides a unique analysis of traditional thinking on state liability for transboundary harm and the theories which have challenged it since the proliferation of hazardous activities in the 1960s. The author favours a return to traditional thinking, but has an eye for the theories that challenged it with the aim of safeguarding the compensation of victims of transboundary harm.

Medical responsibility lawsuits have become a fact of life in every physician’s medical practice. However, there is evidence that physicians are increasingly practising defensive medicine, ordering more tests than may be necessary and avoiding patients with complicated conditions. The modern practice of medicine is increasingly complicated by factors beyond the traditional realm of patient care, including novel technologies, loss of physician autonomy, and economic pressures. A continuing and significant issue affecting physicians and the healthcare system is malpractice. In the latter half of the 20th century, there was a major change in the attitude of the public towards the medical profession. People were made aware of the huge advances in medical technology, because health problems increasingly tended to attract media interest and wide publicity. Medicine is a victim of its own success in this respect, and people are now led to expect the latest techniques and perfect outcomes on all occasions. This burst of technology and hyper-specialization in many fields of medicine means that each malpractice claim is transformed into a scientific challenge, requiring specific preparation in analysis and judgment of the clinical case in question. The role of legal medicine becomes more and more peculiar in this judicial setting, often giving rise to erroneous interpretations and hasty scientific verdicts, but guidelines on the methodology of ascertainments and criteria of evaluation are lacking all over the world.The aim of this volume is to clarify the steps required for sequential in-depth analysis of events and consequences of medical actions, in order to verify whether, in the presence of damage, errors or non-observance of rules of conduct by health personnel exist, and which causal values and links of their hypothetical misconduct are involved.​

Product Liability Desk Reference: A Fifty-State Compendium, 2022 Edition

Bert Van Roosebeke analyses non-contractual state liability in the European Union. He explains differences in member states’ breaching behaviour and presents the state liability doctrine as developed by the European Court of Justice in a number of cases. He shows that compliance is the true economic aim of state liability legislation and presents a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of both private and public law enforcement mechanisms. He finally formulates improvements to the rules of state liability.