Damages

About: Damages is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9365 publications have been published within this topic receiving 89750 citations. The topic is also known as: compensation award.

The Law and Economics of First-Party Insurance Bad Faith Liability

Abstract: States differ in the legal avenues available to policyholders to pursue actions against their insurers for bad faith in claims settlement. This article discusses the various approaches to first-party insurance bad faith law that have been taken by the states, and discusses the potential benefits and costs of different approaches. Regimes that are likely to grant large damages awards to aggrieved policyholders provide the greatest deterrent to insurer bad faith; but such regimes may also create incentives for fraudulent insurance claiming and disincentives for rigorous claims investigations by insurers. The article evaluates the empirical relevance of these potential incentive distortions through an analysis of automobile insurance claim settlement data in states with different bad faith regimes. The data show that claim characteristics and claim investigations differ significantly in states that permit tort-based bad faith from those in other states, in ways consistent with the hypothesized effects.

Civil Liability for Sexual Assault in Aboriginal Residential Schools: The Baker Did it

Abstract: This article relies on reported judicial decisions to examine how individual plaintiffs have fared in tort actions arising from alleged sexual abuse perpetrated in residential schools. It concentrates on three distinct issues: credibility, damage assessment, and vicarious liability. It concludes that tort law has failed the residential school plaintiffs. Their stories are seldom believed in contested litigation. The law fails to take into account the totality of the residential school experience in assessing damages. Indeed, damages are reduced to reflect uncompensated harm from residential schooling. The government is not held vicariously liable for all abuse perpetrated within the residential schools. These problems are similar to those experienced by other plaintiffs seeking redress for sexual abuse. However, residential school survivors have faced additional challenges in tort litigation for sexual abuse, over and beyond the formidable challenges faced by others. We could have and should have done better.

Harassment related to Sex and Sexual Harassment Law in 33 European Countries, Discrimination versus Dignity

Abstract: in the case of sex-related or sexual harassment). Again, there is no case law whatsoever to test how effective those provisions may be. Harassment related to Sex and Sexual Harassment Law in 33 European Countries 48 2.1.10. Compliance with EU law As far as ‘goods and services’ is concerned, Directive 2004/113/EC seems to have been implemented satisfactorily, although no deep thought was dedicated to how sex-related and sexual harassment might occur within such a material scope. As to employment matters, the situation is quite paradoxical. On the one hand, a good deal of effort went into developing a coherent and comprehensive legal system aimed at the prevention and compensation of harassment, sexual harassment and violence at work. On the other hand, providing that when the victim is an employee he/she must rely on the Welfare at Work Act to the exclusion of the Gender Act certainly makes for faulty compliance with Directive 2006/54/EC, for various reasons. First, even if the definition of harassment in the Welfare at Work Act complies with EU anti-discrimination law by stating that a situation of harassment may be conducive to any ‘Article 19 TFEU’ discriminations, such an element is at best marginal in the treatment of the issue. Second and consequently, there is hardly any chance that the notion of ‘harassment on the ground of sex’ as introduced by Directive 2002/73/EC will ever be understood, because the Welfare at Work Act pays much more attention to consequences than to causes. Third, it seems absurd that a woman who is the victim of sexual harassment at work be forbidden to complain about gender discrimination. Fourth, the definition of harassment is more demanding in the Welfare at Work Act than in EU law (see above). And finally, one important innovation of the Gender Act as compared to the previous sex equality legislation is the possibility for the victim to claim fixed damages instead of trying to demonstrate the extent of the harm he/she has suffered; when the challenged situation happens within an employment relationship the fixed damages are equal to six months' pay. Obviously, by forcing the victim to rely on the Welfare at Work Act which does not provide for fixed damages, Belgium has made the transposition of Directive 2006/54 less effective than it could have been. 2.1.11. Additional information More on the same aspect. The unavailability of the provisions of the Gender Act was motivated by purely political considerations. Within the ruling federal coalition at the time, certain parties successfully relayed the associations of the employers' viewpoint. The latter were anxious to avoid that employees who were complaining about harassment or sexual harassment should be able to rely both on the Gender Act and on the Welfare at Work Act, and even more that the fixed damages provided by the first Act should finally be introduced in the second as an inescapable alignment.

What are the best combinations of fuel-vehicle technologies to mitigate climate change and air pollution effects across the United States?

Abstract: Author(s): Tong, F; Azevedo, IML | Abstract: The transportation sector is the largest contributor to CO2 emissions and a major source of criteria air pollutants in the United States. The impact of climate change and that of air pollution differ in space and time, but spatially-explicit, systematic evaluations of the effectiveness of alternative fuels and advanced vehicle technologies in mitigating both climate change and air pollution are lacking. In this work, we estimate the life cycle monetized damages due to greenhouse gas emissions and criteria air pollutant emissions for different types of passenger-moving vehicles in the United States. We find substantial spatial variability in the monetized damages for all fuel-vehicle technologies studied. None of the fuel-vehicle technologies leads simultaneously to the lowest climate change damages and the lowest air pollution damages across all U.S. counties. Instead, the fuel-vehicle technology that best mitigates climate change in one region is different from that for the best air quality (i.e. the trade-off between decarbonization and air pollution mitigation). For example, for the state of Pennsylvania, battery-electric cars lead to the lowest population-weighted-average climate change damages (a climate change damage of 0.87 cent/mile and an air pollution damage of 1.71 cent/mile). In contrast, gasoline hybrid-electric cars lead to the lowest population-weighted-average air pollution damages (a climate change damage of 0.92 cent/mile and an air pollution damage of 0.77 cent/mile). Vehicle electrification has great potential to reduce climate change damages but may increase air pollution damages substantially in regions with high shares of coal-fired power plants compared to conventional vehicles. However, clean electricity grid could help battery electric vehicles to achieve low damages in both climate change and air pollution.

Improving the System of Investor-State Dispute Settlement

Abstract: Investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms embodied in most investment treaties provide rights to foreign investors to seek redress for damages arising out of alleged breaches by host governments of investment-related obligations. The system of investment dispute settlement has borrowed its main elements from the system of commercial arbitration despite the fact that investor-state disputes often raise public interest issues which are usually absent from international commercial...