Dear Colleagues:

Congratulations to ODGers:

1. Sarah Green on the publication of Causation in Negligence;

2. Andrew Dyson, James Goudkamp and Frederick Wilmot-Smith on the publication of Defences in Tort; and

3.  Paul Davies on the publication of Accessory Liability.

All three books are from Hart and are available to ODGers with a 20% discount (using the attached instructions).

Here are the book descriptions (in reverse order):

Accessory Liability

Accessory liability in the private law is of great importance. Claimants often bring claims against third parties who participate in wrongs. For example, the ‘direct wrongdoer’ may be insolvent, so a claimant might prefer a remedy against an accessory in order to obtain satisfactory redress. However, the law in this area has not received the attention it deserves. The criminal law recognises that any person who ‘aids, abets, counsels or procures’ any offence can be punished as an accessory, but the private law is more fragmented. One reason for this is a tendency to compartmentalise the law of obligations into discrete subjects, such as contract, trusts, tort and intellectual property. This book suggests that by looking across such boundaries in the private law, the nature and principles of accessory liability can be better understood and doctrinal confusion regarding the elements of liability, defences and remedies resolved.

 

Defences in Tort

This book is the first in a series of essay collections on defences in private law. It addresses defences to liability arising in tort. The essays range from those adopting a primarily doctrinal approach to others that examine the law from a more theoretical or historical perspective. Some essays focus on individual defences, while some are concerned with the links between defences, or with how defences relate to the structure of tort law as a whole. A number of the essays also draw upon concepts and literature that have been developed mainly in relation to the criminal law and consider their application to tort law. The essays make several original contributions to this complex, important but neglected field of academic enquiry.

Causation in Negligence

The principal objective of this book is simple: to provide a timely and effective means of navigating the current maze of case law on causation, in order that the solutions to causal problems might more easily be reached and the law relating to them more easily understood. The need for this has been increasingly evident in recent judgments dealing with causal issues: in particular, it seems to be ever harder to distinguish between the different ‘categories’ of causation and, consequently, to identify the legal test to be applied on any given set of facts. Causation in Negligence will make such identification easier, both by clarifying the parameters of each category and mapping the current key cases accordingly, and by providing one basic means of analysis which will make the resolution of even the thorniest of causal issues a straightforward process. The causal inquiry in negligence seems to have become a highly complicated and confused area of the law. As this book demonstrates, this is unnecessary and easily remedied.

Happy Reading,

 

-- 
Jason Neyers
Professor of Law
Faculty of Law
Western University
N6A 3K7
(519) 661-2111 x. 88435