Definition
Multiple tortfeasor issues cover cases where the loss is jointly caused by several people acting in a common purpose or not. A lot of examples illustrate these situations including accident law, environmental damage, product liability, etc. The law and economics literature has devoted much attention on these situations in order to understand the properties of different liability rules. Two levels of discussion should be distinguished: first, the negligence/strict liability debate, and second, the joint or no-joint liability rules meaning that the victim may get compensation back by any of the tortfeasors. The article surveys the most important results in law and economics and insists on the fact that multiple tortfeasor cases lead to paradoxes which challenge the very basis of the tort law and the economic rationality.
From One Defender to Several
At the very beginning, tort law has been one of the most promising fields in law and economics: Coase, Calabresi, and Posner were...
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Ferey, S. (2018). Multiple Tortfeasors. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_634-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_634-1
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