SelectedWorks @ Widener University Commonwealth Law School
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The Optimal Resolution of Intra-Policy UM/UIM Stacking
No full textThis article presents the uncertainty and inefficiency across the jurisdictions in intra-policy UM/UIM stacking in personal line automobile insurance policies and recommends a specific solution. Part II provides a brief description of UM/UIM coverage and stacking in general, and Part III delves into the complex issues surrounding UM/UIM stacking today, breaking down the factors and arguments specific to intra-policy and inter-policy stacking. Part IV discusses five general approaches states have taken towards stacking, including three different case examples specific to intra-policy stacking. Part V includes our recommendations for handling intra-policy stacking, followed by the conclusion in Part VI
Introduction, Part II, Perspectives in Mass Tort Litigation Symposium
No full textMass tort litigation, the civil justice system\u27s response to a large number of claims deriving from a product or event, is one of the most dynamic, contested, and financially significant areas of tort law. Prominent examples include asbestos litigation, pharmaceutical litigation, the BP oil spill, and the suit by September 11th first responders. Using a system originally designed for individuals to resolve the claims of groups creates many challenges on both a theoretical and practical level
The New Territorialism in the Not-So-New Frontier of Cyberspace
No full textThis Essay addresses the following questions: What jurisdictions should govern cyberspace problems? Are cyberspace problems different from those in the tangible world? If so, what are the implications for governance? We conclude that the judicial response to cyberspace governance has been mostly correct. After some adaptation problems (an early learning curve), courts have generally followed common law analogs to cyberspace problems. In other words, those problems are not treated as unique unless there is something special about the internet that suggests different resolutions are needed. There certainly is nothing to suggest that American courts or legislatures are trying to occupy the field of cyberspace law
Notice, Assent, and Form in a 140 Character World
No full textThis essay is a contribution to a symposium on Professor Nancy Kim’s terrific book, Wrap Contracts: Foundations and Ramifications. In the book, Prof. Kim examines this explosion in volume of online contract terms and offers some suggestions for improving the judicial approach to these terms. Despite the ease of presenting online terms in a visually appealing format, today’s electronically presented terms are even less comprehensible than those of fifteen years ago. At the same time that individuals have become accustomed to receiving information in small doses due to the proliferation of social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and the practice of text messaging, online terms have become more voluminous. Rather than using the online format to make their terms more appealing to the reader, purveyors of online terms are offering terms that are not only less readable because of their volume, but that include provisions that few people would expect to be contained in contracts of the sort being offered.Professor Kim’s emphasis on the importance of form may be the most significant contribution of her book. Although she makes many important observations in her book, this essay focuses on three related observations. The first relates to the voluminous nature of online terms. Unhindered by the limitations of the paper form, websites engage in what Professor Kim dubs “contracting mania,” which leads them to “stuff their online contracts with many pages of terms.” She then explains that these extra terms include those that are different from terms offered in physically limited paper forms, and include “crook” terms that purport to appropriate “benefits ancillary or unrelated to the transaction.” Both of these characteristics render online terms less readable than paper terms, yet courts, in finding that an individual has notice of online contract terms, have substituted “notice of notice” for notice of the purported contract terms.In this essay, I will briefly discuss the role of the relationship between notice and assent in standard form contracting and then turn to some of the recent cases addressing the enforceability of online terms. This discussion will illustrate that although courts have wisely avoided making entirely new law for online contracts, they have largely ignored the “term creep” that has made online terms less, rather than more, readable
Essential Reading on Sustainable Development Law
No full textThis short bibliography identifies and describes twelve key readings in the law of sustainable development
Apportioning Liability in Maryland Tort Cases: Time to End Contributory Negligence and Joint and Several Liability
No full textThe Article presents a comprehensive proposal for assigning liability in tort cases according to the parties’ respective degrees of fault. The authors criticize the Court of Appeals of Maryland’s recent decision in Coleman v. Soccer Association of Columbia declining to abrogate contributory negligence, particularly the court’s notion that it should not act because of the legislature’s repeated failure to do so. The Article provides a comprehensive analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of comparative fault, including its effect on administrative costs, claims frequency, claims severity, insurance premiums, and economic performance. The authors propose the legislative enactment of comparative fault and debate the respective advantages of its pure and modified forms. The Article then provides a comprehensive roadmap for the implementation of a comparative fault system and addresses the handling of multiple and absent tortfeasors and how the implementation of comparative fault should affect the law governing last clear chance, assumption of risk, and intentional wrongdoing. Because the authors’ approach is one of apportioning liability according to fault, they then recommend abrogating other Maryland doctrines that refuse to apportion liability, including joint and several liability and the state’s statute that declares evidence of seat belt nonuse inadmissible
Can a Single Masterpiece Sustain a Lawyer\u27s Lifetime and Other Questions That Cross a Lawyer\u27s Way
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Goals and Governance in Municipal Bankruptcy
No full textThe years from 2011 to 2013 were remarkable in municipal bankruptcy terms. During those years, several cities and counties took the rare step of filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code. When Detroit filed for bankruptcy in July, 2013, it became the largest city measured by both population and outstanding debt to file for Chapter 9.The recent filings challenge the conventional wisdom that Chapter 9 is poorly tailored to the rehabilitation needs of larger cities and counties. Those who have written about Chapter 9 in the past twenty years have treated Chapter 9 and state intervention in municipal financial affairs as freestanding alternatives rather than as complementary components of a comprehensive municipal financial recovery plan. These authors compare municipal bankruptcy to corporate bankruptcy and conclude that because Chapter 9 does not incorporate all of the Chapter 11 checks on debtor behavior, it cannot adequately promote the financial rehabilitation of a sizable general-purpose municipality. This approach ignores the original goal of Congress in enacting a municipal bankruptcy law in the aftermath of the Great Depression, which was to bring together two sovereigns, the state and the federal government, to accomplish something that neither could accomplish alone – the imposition of a plan to adjust municipal debts that would be binding on all creditors, wherever located. This article refocuses the discussion about the limitations of the municipal bankruptcy process by examining the goals of Chapter 9 and relating its governance provisions to those goals. A refocused discussion is particularly timely, because the deteriorating financial condition of many cities has led states to reexamine their programs for resolving municipal financial distress and the conditions under which they permit their municipalities to file for bankruptcy. Chapter 9 may only be as effective as the state governance that accompanies it. Therefore, policy makers on the state and federal levels need an understanding of the role of Chapter 9 in an integrated scheme for municipal financial recovery in order to decide whether and how to assist municipalities on the state level and to decide whether reforms to Chapter 9 are necessary