This publication provides a student with an understanding of ten leading torts cases, focusing on how the litigation was shaped by lawyers, judges and socioeconomic factors, and why the cases have attained landmark status. It is suitable for adoption as a supplement in a first-year torts course, or as a text for an advanced seminar.

A law school casebook that maps the progression of the law of torts through the language and example of public judicial decisions in a range of cases. A tort is a wrong that a court is prepared to recognize, usually in the form of ordering the transfer of money (“damages”) from the wrongdoer to the wronged. The tort system offers recourse for people aggrieved and harmed by the actions of others. By filing a lawsuit, private citizens can demand the attention of alleged wrongdoers to account for what they’ve done—and of a judge and jury to weigh the claims and set terms of compensation. This book, which can be used as a primary text for a first-year law school torts course, maps the progression of the law of torts through the language and example of public judicial decisions in a range of cases. Taken together, these cases show differing approaches to the problems of defining legal harm and applying those definitions to a messy world. The cases range from alleged assault and battery by “The Schoolboy Kicker” (1891) to the liability of General Motors for “The Crumpling Toe Plate” (1993). Each case is an artifact of its time; students can compare the judges’ societal perceptions and moral compasses to those of the current era. This book is part of the Open Casebook series from Harvard Law School Library and MIT Press.

Dorf's Constitutional Law Stories provides a student with an understanding of 15 leading U.S. constitutional law cases. It focuses on how lawyers, judges, and socioeconomic factors shaped the litigation, and why the cases have attained landmark status. This book is suitable for adoption as a supplement in an introductory constitutional law course or as a text for an advanced seminar.

"Kings of Tort chronicles a tale of judicial bribery and political intrigue in Mississippi ... . It features the story of Dickie Scruggs, who was largely credited with bringing down Big Tobacco in the early 1990s. From his ascent to a net worth of nearly a billion dollars to his downfall stemming from his role in improperly influencing two local judges to influence cases involving fee disputes with other lawyers, the book documents how those in Scruggs's own trusted circle of tort barons turned on him and cooperated with federal authorities. It also shows the political influence he wielded with judges, attorneys general, and even his own brother-in-law, former US Senator Trent Lott" --

The traditional definition of torts involves bizarre, idiosyncratic events where a single plaintiff with a physical impairment sues the specific defendant he believes to have wrongfully caused that malady. Yet public attention has focused increasingly on mass personal-injury lawsuits over asbestos, cigarettes, guns, the diet drug fen-phen, breast implants, and, most recently, Vioxx. Richard A. Nagareda’s Mass Torts in a World of Settlement is the first attempt to analyze the lawyer’s role in this world of high-stakes, multibillion-dollar litigation. These mass settlements, Nagareda argues, have transformed the legal system so acutely that rival teams of lawyers operate as sophisticated governing powers rather than litigators. His controversial solution is the replacement of the existing tort system with a private administrative framework to address both current and future claims. This book is a must-read for concerned citizens, policymakers, lawyers, investors, and executives grappling with the changing face of mass torts.

Presenting twenty-two years of multidistrict litigation data, this book exposes a systematic lack of checks and balances in our courts.

“The newspaper headline declared in large bold letters: “Shoot Out At High Noon.” Reading the first paragraph of the article disclosed the truth of the old saying, “don’t take a knife to a gun fight.” The man with the knife lay dead on the ground, while the fellow with the rifle fled the scene in his blue Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck” (from “The Love Triangle”). Tales and Torts: Stories of a Country Lawyer is a unique collection of short stories proving the axiom, “sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.” Each story recounted is based on a real legal case and each illuminates the human condition. Love, prized animals, tragedy, murder, swindlers and thieves, disgruntled family members, and hardened criminals. These tales involve a wide variety of cases in many areas of the law with astonishing fact patterns and extraordinary individuals chosen out of thousands of cases over a forty-year legal career. From the Jewish Russian tenor escaping religious persecution in Russia, to the Tongan travelling to experience the miracle of snow in Canada, to Li jing, whose life was tragically altered on Chinese New Year’s Eve, each character is brought to life with humour, compassion, and an eye to achieving one goal: justice.