[extropy-chat] Proactionary in court?

[Greg Burch]

> From: bluesteel_0 at yahoo.co.uk
> 
> Has the Proactionary Principle just put it's head
> above the parapet in British Courts?
> 
> It was announced this morning that legislation will be
> introduced to combat the growing Compensation Culture,
> and in particular the tendency for the number of
> school trips for children to dwindle as schools are
> increasingly fearful of being sued if anything should
> go wrong. New advice to courts will be:
> 
> "a court which is considering a negligence claim
> should also take into account any benefit of the
> activity, and organisers who have taken reasonable
> precautions will not be held liable."
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4401820.stm
> 
> So finally are potential benefits as well as potential
> risks going to be balanced in the equation?
> 
> Julian

Risk-benefit balancing has been an explicit part of U.S. tort liability law for a long time, in the area of what we call "products liability."  Here's a discussion that includes elements of risk-benefit balancing in the most recent Restatement of that law:

http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Aug/1/129315.html

Look at the quotations from the official commentary to Chapter 1.

As the Restatements often do, there is a tendency here to annunciate from "on high" without full recognition of some of the difficulties of applying the principles articulated to specific cases.  In practice, courts have been struggling with the "utlitiy" aspect of this law for its entire four decade history.

GB