Law tort no worries
That suggests that his behavior was clearly inefficient, so we need not worry about over deterring it. In the case of a deliberate tort, that is less of a problem. Punitive damages may be more, sometimes much more.
The next step is to separate precautions into observable and unobservable ones. And under this rule, the court no longer needs to either observe or evaluate precautions, so it requires less information than under a rule of either negligence or contributory negligence.
But in the real world, information is imperfect, litigation is costly, and courts less than omniscient. It is important to remember, however, that the intent is not necessarily a hostile intent or even a desire to do serious harm.
I do it. If I hurt my hand because a Coke bottle explodes, liability law may reimburse me for the loss, but if I slip on my own icy front stairs and hurt my hand, there is nobody to sue but myself. So one way of viewing punitive damages is as a tool for enforcing a property rule.
But why express outrage by giving a windfall gain to the victim? As we learned in Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery v.
Tort law notes
These arguments give us a fairly straightforward result, although one not always easy to apply in practice. For more on that subject, stay tuned. While there is no way of making an inherently dangerous product safe, one can still avoid the danger by not using the product. If a particular offense does net damage, damage to victim minus gain to tortfeasor, of a hundred dollars, but deterring it costs a thousand dollars in litigation costs, we are better off not bothering. To the extent that liability law insures the user against accidents, it reduces his incentive to prevent them, which is an argument for caveat emptor. If buyers do not have such information but sellers do and sellers are in the best position to prevent accidents, the best rule is caveat venditor. Assault is an intentional tort when one is placed in reasonable apprehension of an intentional, imminent, unconsented, harmful, or offensive touching by another person. If we are not sure exactly how much damage the tort did, we might as well guess high.One reason why that may be a sensible rule will be discussed in chapter