The Development of Tort Law in North American, Essay Example

Introduction

According to J.C.P. Goldberg, tort laws in the United States first came about as an “important body of law in the nineteenth century” circa the rise of the Industrial Revolution; previously, tort law was “totally insignificant,” due to the fact that it failed to address “a large-scale social problem,” such as individuals being sued in court for damages related to faulty products. Thus, tort law became significant when “it was first called on to function as a compensation system” via a response by the U.S. federal government which at the time was dependent upon “laissez-faire individualism” in relation to America’s economic system. Overall, tort laws became necessary when an “epidemic of accidents, brought on by the Industrial Revolution” began to infiltrate America’s judicial court system (2011, p. 85).

The earliest indications of the foundations for today’s tort law in the United States can be found in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. For example, in 1770, “the copper works of Charles Roe & Company had been indicted as a public nuisance in Liverpool” which resulted in the removal of all copper works from that city; in 1812, a “successful prosecution was launched against the operator of a steam engine in Sheffield” via the charge that the engine belched out “unwholesome smoke and smells” that polluted the air. Similarly, in 1862, the Select Committee on Noxious Vapours “revealed a series of actions brought by landowners. . . against alkali factories” (McLaren, 1983, p. 159).

From a political standpoint, the British courts held the view that in nuisance cases, “unless the inconvenience caused by a defendant’s activity was trivial, liability would follow once the plaintiff had established” that his land and home were being inundated with some type of interference which lowered the enjoyment of his property. In a case such as this, the “predominant thought was that a plaintiff, especially a residential occupier, had a pre-eminent claim to protection” from intereference, meaning that he had the right to protect his home and property from a nuisance, such as living next door to a horse stable or a pig farm in a residential area of the city (McLaren, 1983, p. 169).

In the book review “Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History,” Robert W. Gordon notes that G. Edward White, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, places the beginning of tort law around 1870 which tends to support Goldberg’s assertion that these laws commenced circa the Industrial Revolution in America. As White declares, 1870 marks the first stage of tort laws in the United States when “legal academics, inspired by a generally prevailing ideal of scientific endeavor, tried to sort private law into systems of general classification” (1981, p. 903).

Most of what was occurring in the United States in regards to tort law in the later years of the 19th century was based on the English case of Fletcher v. Rylands in the 1860’s which Shugerman calls “one of the most significant and controversial precedents in the strict liability canon.” However, in America, most U.S. courts rejected this case until a consensus was developed circa the opening years of the 20th century (2000, pp. 333-334). This then led to what White refers to as the “doctrinal field of torts” sometime around 1900 which was, more or less, a simple “jumble of miscellaneous rights of action” without any firm legal foundation. Following this, lawyers attempted to “reclassify as many of these actions as possible under a single theory of liability,” founded of course upon fault which then led to specialization in the field of tort law (1981, p. 903).

However, the idea of strict liability or no fault also became of major importance around the later years of the 19th century. As noted by Edwards, Edwards, and Kirtley Wells, American intellectuals who embraced the guiding principles of scientific thought, such as legal scholar and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “adopted the scientific paradigm as they sought to create common principles that specified” when plaintiffs in a court of law were legally entitled to financial compensation for their suffering in relation to a particular type of nuisance or interference. As a result, these “scientific scholars created a general duty of care that resulted in a fault theory of tort law” (2009, p. 12). Overall then, by the beginning of the 20th century, American lawyers, acting for the most part as academicians, “significantly affected the content of tort rules and doctrines” which eventually influenced the entire state of tort law in the United States (White, 2003, p. 4).

Tort Law: A Definition

In legal terms, tort law or a tort can be defined as a “civil wrong, other than a breach of contract, for which the court provides a remedy in the form of an action for damages.” But as contrasted with the beginnings of tort law, today’s definition has been wholly expanded by the courts and the U.S. Congress to encompass “a large area in litigation in which a victim (i.e., the plaintiff) seeks a remedy from some defendant,” whether an individual, a corporation, or a government, that has generated harm to the plaintiff.  Some of the forms of litigation includes personal injury, medical malpractice, wrongful death, negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation, defamation, and especially

“intentional wrongs against a person, such as assault, battery, false imprisonment, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Overall, tort law is utilized by victims, while the crimes themselves that generated the suit are prosecuted by the federal government (Standler, 2011, pp. 3-4).

Tort Law in the 20th Century

According to George L. Priest, professor of law and economics at Yale University, prior to the advent of the 20th century, negligence in relation to the tort law of the United States was defined “in terms of the extent to which the injury-causing behavior deviated from the normal,” being “intentional, harm-causing actions that justified liability” claims in a court of law. This is in reference to “strict liability” which could not be defended in relation to “specific factual circumstances where the abnormality of the injurer’s activity was so obvious” that it could not be debated in court (1991, p. 33). A good example is some type of physical injury caused by negligence, such as being crippled by an accident at a manufacturing plant while on-the-job and under the supervision of the injurer.

By the first decade of the 20th century, the legal foundations of tort law in the United States began to evolve as “legal scholars and policymakers began to consider tort law more seriously,” especially as a legal tool for affirmative public policy. At this time, worker’s compensation laws began to emerge for those injured while on-the-job. At the same time, state legislatures and the U.S. federal government started to view tort law as a “compromise between workers and management” related to decreasing the amount of monetary damage awarded to plaintiffs in a court of law. Shortly thereafter, legal scholars and lawyers wished to see the worker’s compensation system legally aligned with the “rules of negligence and strict liability.” Also, some lawyers began to examine other legal avenues related to utilizing tort law in the United States for personal gain as opposed to social gains for American society as a whole (Priest, 1991, p. 33).

In the 1920’s and as America’s industrial base expanded into the greatest economic engine in the world, the most prominent source for the use of tort law was the automobile in relation to physical injuries suffered in an auto accident. By the early 1930’s, it had become clear to legal scholars and lawyers that most automobile accident victims were not being compensated for their injuries. Thus, in 1932, the Committee to Study Compensation for Automobile Accidents was created at Columbia University which later discovered that it was difficult to prove a driver’s negligence. In response, the Committee proposed that “laws concerning auto accidents be replaced by a compensation insurance system” which would effectively remove the need for proof of negligence related to auto accidents (Priest, 1991, pp. 33-34).

Throughout the 1930’s and well into the 1940’s, auto accidents “remained the problem of central importance to legal scholars” and attorneys. One of the main questions raised in relation to utilizing tort law for liability suits via auto accidents was “Which of the parties in a two-car collision should be made absolutely liable?” As might be suspected, this question opened the proverbial door to auto compensation laws based on innovative insurance schemes and of course U.S. tort law (Priest, 1991, p. 35).

With the outbreak of World War II in 1941, rights concerning tort law in the United States (which inevitably transposed itself to Canada where tort law was and still is based on the old British Tort Law system of the 19th century) greatly expanded, due in part to the “elimination of defendant-friendly immunities and defenses, the adoption of strict liability,” and the emergence of a new area for tort law legal examination, being the exposure to hazardous materials and chemicals in America’s factories, plants, and other manufacturing centers (Nockleby & Curreri, 2005, p. 1027). As described by Nockleby and Curreri, this period is broadly categorized as the Democratic

Expansionary Era when “plaintiff-friendly tort expansion occurred following two centuries of law favorable to society’s wealthy and educated elite” (2005, p. 1027).

One of the most famous legal cases related to tort law expansion is the 1944 Escola v. Coca Cola in which a restaurant waitress brought suit against mega-giant Coca Cola for her injuries caused by a bottle of Coca Cola breaking in her hand. As pointed out by the judge in this case, negligence on the part of Coca Cola was clear, thus resulting in the judge’s opinion that “It should now be recognized that a manufacturer incurs absolute liability when an article that has been placed on the market” turns out to be defective and causes injury (Standler, 2011, p. 15).

In post-World War II America, the legal exploration of manufacturer liability for defective products via tort law was in its infancy, but by the early 1950’s, this area of inquiry began to draw the attention of tort law scholars and America’s attorneys. At first, U.S. warranty law rules remained dominant, due to the fact that manufacturers simply had to promise that a defective product would either be replaced or repaired. However, with the introduction of U.S. tort law, manufacturers were forced to “directly internalize injury costs which encouraged them to either make their products safer or do away with them entirely” (Priest, 1991, pp. 35-36). Thus, after the late 1950’s, product liability “became a prominent issue in tort law” and quickly surpassed lawsuits based on automobile accidents (Priest, 1991, p. 36).

By the 1960’s, tort law had become the standard rule of the land. One particular case which caused this standardization was Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc. in which the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that “cases involving personal injury from product use would no longer be governed by warranty law” and that product warranties were in effect merely “tools for exploiting consumers” which in so many words, “denied such warranties any future effect” (Priest, 1991, p. 37).  In essence, this case signaled the beginning of a legal revolution in tort law via strict liability related to defective products that cause personal injury to their users. In fact, this legal revolution was so influential that in 1971, twenty-eight U.S. states unanimously adopted a number of specific legal provisions that empowered the idea of strict product liability (Priest, 1991, p. 37). These and other provisions, along with tort law regulations, are in-force today in every American state. As to the legal profession, tort law specialization is today widespread in the United States which accounts for tort law liability suits concerning defective products making newspaper headlines on a regular basis.

Conclusion

Obviously, the existence of tort law in the United States and other Western nations has made it possible for millions of plaintiffs to obtain financial compensation for job-related injuries, medical errors, negligent misrepresentation, and injuries related to defective products via strict liability regulations. Overall, tort law has “succeeded in politicizing the system of civil justice” and has brought “contentions into every state legislature in the country as well as in the U.S. Congress.” In addition, tort law in the United States continues to serve as the basis for a debate over “who should pay for the losses that a complex post-industrial society” has created (Nockleby & Curreri, 2005, p. 1090) and who or what should be held legally responsible for injuries and emotional distress caused by defective products and pure human negligence.

References

Edwards, L., Edwards, J.S., and Kirtley Wells, P. (2009). Tort Law. 4th ed. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar.

Goldberg, J.C.P. (2011). Tort law at the founding. Florida State University Law Review (39)85: 85-105. Retrieved from http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/documents/goldberg.pdf

Gordon, R.W. (1981). Book Review. “Tort law in America: An intellectual history.” Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 1372. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1372

McLaren, J.P.S. (1983). Nuisance law and the industrial revolution: Some lessons from social history. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (3)2: 155-221.

Nockleby, J.T., and Curreri, S. (2005). 100 years of conflict: The past and future of tort retrenchment. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 38: 1021-1092. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&context=llr

Priest, G.L. (1991). The modern expansion of tort liability: Its sources, its effects, and its reform. Journal of Economic Perspectives (5)3: 31-50. Retrieved from http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.5.3.31

Shugerman, J.H. (2000). The floodgates of strict liability: Bursting reservoirs and the adoption of Fletcher v. Rylands in the Gilded Age. Yale Law Journal (110)2: 333-377.

Standler, R.B. (2011). Elements of tort in the USA. Retrieved from http://www.rbs2.com/torts.pdf

White, G.E. (2003). The intellectual origins of torts in America. New York: Oxford University Press. 3-19.