Providing a comprehensive and principled account of the uncertainty problem that arises in tort litigation, this text critically examines the existing doctrinal solutions of the problem, as evolved in England, United States, Canada & Israel.

Causal uncertainty is a wide-spread phenomenon. Courts are often unable to determine whether a defendant’s tortious conduct was a factual cause of a plaintiff’s harm. Yet, sometimes courts can determine the probability that the defendant caused the plaintiff’s harm, although often there is considerable variance in the probability estimate based on the available evidence. The conventional way to cope with this uncertainty has been to apply the evidentiary rule of ‘standard of proof’. The application of this ‘all or nothing’ rule can lead to unfairness by absolving defendants who acted tortiously and may also create undesirable incentives that result in greater wrongful conduct and injustice to victims. Some courts have decided that this ‘no-liability’ outcome is undesirable. They have adopted rules of proportional liability that compensate plaintiffs according to the probability that their harm was caused by the defendant’s tortious conduct. In 2005 the Principles of European Tort Law (PETL) made a breakthrough in this regard by embracing rules of proportional liability. This project, building on PETL, endeavours to make further inquiries into the desirable scope of proportional liability and to offer a more detailed view of its meaning, implications, and ramifications.

A clear, critical analysis of proof of causation in the law of tort in England, France and Germany.

This discussion of causal uncertainty in tort liability adopts a comparative approach in order to highlight the important normative, epistemological and procedural implications of the various proposed solutions. Occupying a middle ground between the legal perspective and the philosophical views that are at stake when it comes to the resolution of tort law cases in a context of causal uncertainty, the arguments will be of great interest to legal scholars, legal philosophers and advanced tort law students.

This book undertakes an analysis of academic and judicial responses to the problem of evidential uncertainty in causation in negligence. It seeks to bring clarity to what has become a notoriously complex area by adopting a clear approach to the function of the doctrine of causation within a corrective justice-based account of negligence liability. It first explores basic causal models and issues of proof, including the role of statistical and epidemiological evidence, in order to isolate the problem of evidential uncertainty more precisely. Application of Richard Wright's NESS test to a range of English case law shows it to be more comprehensive than the 'but for' test that currently dominates, thereby reducing the need to resort to additional tests, such as the Wardlaw test of material contribution to harm, the scope and meaning of which are uncertain. The book builds on this foundation to explore the solution to a range of problems of evidential uncertainty, focusing on the Fairchild principle and the idea of risk as damage, as well as the notion of loss of a chance in medical negligence which is often seen as analogous with 'increase in risk', in an attempt to bring coherence to this area of the law.

This controversial book describes the transformation of modern tort law since the 1960s, and shows how the dramatic increase in liability lawsuits has had an adverse effect on the safety, health, the cost of insurance, and individual rights.

This book takes an original and comparative approach to issues of causation in tort law across many European legal systems.