Notes and Comments

1.Why did the plaintiff switch to absolute liability instead of following a negligence theory? What benefit would it give to the plaintiffs?

2.Sometimes it is a mere unfortunate accident when a person is injured without being able to get any remedies,and the sufferings have to stay where they are.For instance,a person walking in the rain and hit by lightning.Can he blame the weatherman? Can he blame the city government for not having rain shelter on the particular spot where he was hit? He can try,but most likely it would not work.Or else,in a close case,a person walking by a building when another person jumps to his suicide,falling right on top of the first man.The person committing suicide is obviously to be blamed for the first man’s injury.But if he dies,what then? And suppose he has no immediate relatives who can take care of his estates.Who is going to pay the first man’s injury?(https://www.daowen.com)

3.Tort law is very much built on liabilities,and liabilities in turn depends on negligence,i.e.,the doing of a wrong.What is a “wrong” then? A plaintiff has to first prove that there is a standard against which everybody’s behavior is measured.The hard problem with tort law is that the standard is not always the same.For example,how fast should a car go? And how fast is too fast? You might say,let’s post a street speed limit that says “50 k.p.h.” Is that the safest speed? How about a sunny day,and how about a snowy day when the road is covered with ice? In this sense,tort law requires a sense of standard of behavio r that most people should and would observe,rather than a particular standard.In the above example,the 50 k.p.h.is merely the fastest you can go under all circumstances,but not the particular speed in particular situations.