Sandy Steel

Corpus Christi College

Proof of Natural Causation in the Common and Civil Law of Tort

In this thesis, I do three things. I compare how common law (England, USA, Canada, Australia) and civil law (France, Germany, Austria) countries (and in some part, European model civil 'codes') deal with uncertainty (mainly epistemic, but partly conceptual) over natural causation or cause in fact. For example, some legal systems alter their substantive law in order to achieve a better distribution of the risk of uncertainty over causation. A prominent example is the achievement of proportional liability through positing that causation of an increased risk in harm, or, conversely, the loss of a chance, is a legal damage. I provide an interpretation and analysis of the internal inconsistencies in the legal doctrine of these legal systems in terms of the various and conflicting (eg: fairness: corrective and/or distributive vs utility) aims which these systems set for themselves in regulating this area (on a best interpretation of how they are proceeding). I offer arguments against substantive law solutions to the various problems of epistemic causal uncertainty based upon the notion that "risk" is a harm. I offer arguments against certain other interchanges between liability rules and evidential rules, for example, proposed doctrines of evidential damage; and the German Grober Behandlungsfehler doctrine. Positively, I suggest a justice-based model for regulating causal uncertainty which allows for proportional liability in certain circumstances. At least, at the moment.

Start Date: 2008/01.

End Date: 2011/01.

PhD, Law, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2009 - present

Diploma in Legal Studies, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2008 - 2009

BA (Law), Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 2005 - 2008

 

Domestic Research Studentship Award 2008 - 2011

Scholar, Corpus Christi College, 2007

Exhibitioner, Corpus Christi College, 2006

 

Pythia Prize for Excellence in Classical Greek Literature, awarded by European Cultural Centre of Delphi, 2005

 

Supervisor, 2009 - 2010,   Law of Tort, Murray Edwards College, in part, Corpus Christi College

Supervisor, 2009 - 2010,   Civil Law I,  King's, Selwyn, Newnham, Peterhouse Colleges

 

 

Tort

Crime

Legal/Moral Philosophy

 

Uncertainty over Causal Uncertainty (2010) 73 (4) MLR 646

Review of Michael Moore, Causation and Responsibility (2010) 126 LQR 476

 

Translations:

G. Viney, Liability for Rail and Road Traffic Accidents in eds. Bell & Ibbetson, Comparative Studies in the Development of the Law of Torts in Europe

R. Zimmermann and N. Jansen, Contract Formation and Mistake in European Contract Law (forthcoming)

Professor David Ibbetson