This chapter deals with the enforceability of U.S. opt-out class actions in continental Europe, with special attention to Italy, France and Spain. The study sets out by a thorough analysis of U.S. precedents concerning the availability of extra-compensatory damages in complex litigation (among...

This article investigates the determinants of the blockbuster punitive damages awards of at least $100 million. As of the end of 2008, there had been 100 such awards with an average value of $3.0 billion. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in State Farm v. Campbell suggested a single digit upper...

In this paper, I consider how tort law and criminal law - conceived as interlocking and overlapping systems for protecting and upholding the legal rights people have against other people - should operate in a society where there are not enough public funds available to run those systems properly...

Protocol 36 to the Lisbon Treaty gives the UK the right to opt out en bloc of all the police and criminal justice measures adopted under the Treaty of Maastricht ahead of the date when the Court of Justice of the EU at Luxembourg will acquire jurisdiction in relation to them. The government is...

Gray v Motor Accidents Commission (1998) 196 CLR 1 resolved that the most appropriate arena for the punishment of individual wrongdoing resides within the Australian criminal law. The consequence of this decision is that wrongful acts may no longer give rise to exemplary damages in tort where a...

La version française de cet article peut être consultée au:"http://ssrn.com/abstract=2500362" http://ssrn.com/abstract=2500362 When Bill C-45 came into force in 2004, it introduced major modifications to the Canadian penal law system concerning the participatory liability of organizations for...

Fines and damages are the principal sanctions of criminal, civil and regulatory law. Yet in law it does not matter who pays money sanctions. Damages overwhelmingly are paid by insurers and the cost of insurance premiums loaded into commodity prices and thus dispersed among consumers. Fines are...

Suppose you turn on your laptop while sitting at the kitchen table at home and respond OK to a prompt about accessing a nearby wireless Internet access point owned and operated by a neighbor. What potential liability may ensue from accessing someone else's wireless access point? How about...

This article argues that punitive, nominal, contemptuous, vindicatory, and disgorgement damages (commonly referred to as non-compensatory damages) can be collectively analysed as public interest damages because all these awards are justified by violations of public interests in addition to...

A number of recent corporate law scandals (including the Wells Fargo fraudulent accounts scandal, the Volkswagen emissions scandal, sexual harassment claims at Fox News and CBS, and various banking scandals currently under investigation in a high profile Australian Royal Commission) epitomize...