Series: Hart Studies in Private Law

This collection of essays explores the real-world problem of building safety through the lens of private law. High profile building failures, including the fire at Grenfell Tower, London, England, and the collapse of Champlain Towers South, Florida, USA, have exposed widespread building safety failures globally. In this book, international experts deploy a variety of different private law perspectives, ranging through...

Promises of indemnity are found in many kinds of commercial contracts, not just contracts of insurance. Contractual Indemnities by Wayne Courtney examines the nature and effect of contractual indemnities outside the insurance context. It is the first work to provide a detailed account of the subject in English law. The book presents a coherent theory of the promise of indemnity...

This book is the first considered study of final injunctions in tort law. It devises a novel taxonomy of such injunctions and explores the implications of the law on injunctions for the way in which scholars think about tort law more generally. The book begins by analysing how the injunction in aid of legal rights came to be developed as...

This ambitious book grapples with the complex debates ongoing on the structure of unjust enrichment, proving to be a major contribution to the field. Responding to the subject’s critics, it presents a clearly articulated structure for this branch of private law, arguing that while unjust enrichment has the function of reversing defective enrichments (whether by performance or in another way)...

This book explores the relationship between the English law of unjust enrichment and legal obligations arising from other branches of the law. It examines the question primarily by considering how English courts resolve conflicts between restitution claims and countervailing legal entitlements. This is much needed given recent cases such as IEG v Zurich Insurance and Avonwick Holdings Ltd v Azitio...

The principal objective of this book is simple: to provide a timely and effective means of navigating the current maze of case law on causation, in order that the solutions to causal problems might more easily be reached and the law relating to them more easily understood. The need for this has been increasingly evident in recent judgments dealing with...

Private law regulates life; this is self-evident, but how does it regulate death? This edited collection explores this question. Life and death are the beginning and end of the legal person: the instigator and terminator of rights, interests and obligations. They are also the nominal separator of particular fields of law (medical law from succession law, for example). As such,...

This is a landmark and ambitious research project looking at private law through the policy prism undertaken by a team of acknowledged experts in their fields. The majority of existing literature diminishes the impact of policy in the development of legal principles, impeding a deeper understanding of it. Part of a two-part study, this first volume explores tort law, property...

This book aims to provide a detailed analysis and overview of the duty of care enquiry, drawing on both academic analyses and judicial experience in leading common law systems. A new structure through which duty problems can be analysed is also proposed. It is hoped that the book provides some fresh insights and clarity of the concept to the reader....

The law of torts recognises many defences to liability. While some of these defences have been explored in detail, scant attention has been given to the theoretical foundations of defences generally. In particular, no serious attempt has been made to explain how defences relate to each other or to the torts to which they pertain. The goal of this book...

Accessory Liability in the private law is of great importance. Claimants often bring claims against third parties who participate in wrongs. For example, the ‘direct wrongdoer’ may be insolvent, so a claimant might prefer a remedy against an accessory in order to obtain satisfactory redress. However, the law in this area has not received the attention it deserves. The criminal...

Interpretation or construction is central to the operation of contract law. Despite the fundamental role it plays, there have been limited attempts to explain construction in holistic terms. This important book aims to fill that gap by offering a systematic exposition of the iterative process. It also goes further, suggesting practical solutions to disputes regarding questions of interpretation. The book...

Looking at key questions of how companies are held accountable under private law, this book presents a succinct and accessible framework for analysing and answering corporate attribution problems in private law. Corporate attribution is the process by which the acts and states of mind of human individuals are treated as those of a company to establish the company’s rights, duties,...

This collection of essays interrogates significant issues at the forefront of scholarship and legal practice in the field of money remedies in equity. Chapters address the contentious and developing field of equitable compensation, including: the nature of equitable compensation; the relevant causation inquiry for equitable compensation; whether notions of contribution apply to multiple agents; accessorial liability; the role of discretion...

This book discusses the dominant corrective justice and distributive justice approaches to private law and identifies their strengths and weaknesses. It goes on to propose a general approach to private law, including contract, tort, and private property, and explains how it can provide solutions to some longstanding problems. Two general ideas inform this approach: the ‘standpoint limitation’ and ‘remedial consistency’....

This innovative and thought-provoking book studies how subrogation and marshalling should be understood in the context of private law. Subrogation and marshalling are legal rules which give a person new rights with prima facie the same content as someone else’s extinguished rights. There is little examination of why the law does this. Subrogation and Marshalling argues that the key to...

This book engages with some of Stephen A Smith’s most significant arguments, illustrating that he was a towering figure in the field of private law, with little of the field not impacted by his scholarship. The contributors explore Professor Smith’s most controversial thinking on private law. Interrogating questions of contract law, remedies, unjust enrichment, comparative law, and the legal theory...

This book explores the performance of compensation law in addressing the needs of the injured. Compensation procedure can be dangerous to your health and may fail to compensate without aggravation or creating other problems. Unexpected Consequences of Compensation Law takes a refreshing and insightful approach to the law of compensation, considering from an interdisciplinary perspective, the actual effect of compensation...

Mandatory and Default Rules in Contract and Commercial Law is a collection exploring the nature and justification of mandatory rules, which are non-excludable, and default rules, which can be modified or excluded by the parties in contract and commercial law. The collection distinguishes between different kinds of mandatory and default rules that govern commercial transactions. It also explores the choice...

This book explores the use of the doctrine of good faith in the common law when interpreting contracts and resolving disputes. This doctrine is well-accepted in civil law, is reflected in international commercial law, and is a fundamental aspect of private law in the USA. However, its use in the UK is extremely limited. Inconsistent application has given rise to...

This book provides a systematic and critical analysis of the role trusts play in modern commercial markets. Commercial trusts are complex and ever-evolving, and a reassessment of the traditional legal norms relating to them is much needed in order to provide new doctrinal insights. The Commercial Uses of Trusts does just that: focusing on trusts in the UK, while drawing...

Unlike other areas of the private law, the law of unjust enrichment stands or falls with the theory upon which it is based. This theory, fashioned primarily by Peter Birks and continued by many other scholars, is known as the ‘dominant model’. The model employs a number of crucial concepts such as enrichment, benefit, value, and injustice. Unfortunately, the model...