Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Van Boom, Willem H. --- "Harmonizing Tort Law: A Comparative Tort Law and Economics Analysis" [2009] ELECD 301; in Faure, Michael (ed), "Tort Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Tort Law and Economics

Editor(s): Faure, Michael

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847206596

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Harmonizing Tort Law: A Comparative Tort Law and Economics Analysis

Author(s): Van Boom, Willem H.

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

16 Empirics of tort
Ben C.J. van Velthoven


16.1 Introduction
People can incur damage in many ways. A person's feelings and property
may get hurt by slander, deceit, assault or battery; a consumer may be
injured by a defective product; a motorist may see his car being driven
into from behind; an employee may get sick from the working conditions
in his job; a patient may be harmed by a medical error. In each of these
instances, the victim can turn to the tort liability system and try to obtain
a court order to make the injurer pay for his losses. In this way, the tort
liability system serves three purposes. It provides a forum for the victims
to be heard and to oblige the injurers to make up for morally culpable
and egregious behavior (corrective justice). It provides compensation to
those who are harmed (distributive justice). And it provides incentives for
individuals and firms to take appropriate care and to reduce the number
of injuries (prevention or deterrence).
The economic approach, drawing on concepts of efficiency, tends to
emphasize the deterrent objective of the tort system. The efficiency ques-
tion is about minimizing the total costs associated with injuries, which
include:

the costs of prevention, when efforts are put in place to take a certain
level of care to avoid injuries;
the costs of the injuries that nonetheless occur (both economic losses
such as material damage, medical care and decreased worker output,
and non-economic losses ...