Advanced Torts In A Nutshell

A concise and authoritative text on major areas of tort law typically included in Advanced Torts courses and casebooks. It includes defamation, invasion of privacy torts, malicious prosecution, wrongful death, actions for injuries to family relationships, and most of the numerous and increasingly important economic torts.

The Advanced Torts casebook is designed for courses on the major tort law subjects that are not included in the basic first-year tort courses. The popularity and consistent use of this casebook reflect the fact that the book is unique in its in-depth coverage of advanced torts subjects, which are now the principal growth areas of tort law. Subjects covered in Advanced Torts include defamation, the rights of privacy and publicity, harm to family relationships, wrongful birth, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, interference with common law civil rights, liability for economic loss, interference with contracts, interference with business relations, unfair competition, common law rights to literary and commercial creations and ideas, trade secrets, and other economic torts including injurious falsehood. The third edition maintains the casebook's clear organization and rich range of cases from not only the United States, but also England, Canada, Australia and other common law legal systems--cases selected as the most valuable for instructional purposes as well as for their influence in shaping tort law. New cases and notes, addressing such developing areas as liability for defamation in Internet communications, bring the material fully up-to-date. The casebook has ample material for courses and seminars on economic torts (business torts) or defamation and privacy (tort law and the communications media). "Advanced Torts provides a thorough grounding in the topics. And the author's notes, interspersed among the primary textual materials, offer valuable insights and useful sources on contemporary issues. All fundamental categories of advanced torts are well analyzed."--The Business Torts Reporter, on the first edition

This casebook is designed for instructors who want to cover business torts in some depth and also for instructors who want to cover in some detail subjects like products liability, damages, and defamation and privacy without requiring students who have not used our basic torts casebook in their initial torts course to incur the greater expense of having to purchase our more comprehensive casebook.

The Advanced Torts casebook is designed for courses on the major tort law subjects that are not included in the basic first-year tort courses. The popularity and consistent use of this casebook reflect the fact that the book is unique in its in-depth coverage of advanced torts subjects, which are now the principal growth areas of tort law. Subjects covered in Advanced Torts include defamation, the rights of privacy and publicity, harm to family relationships, wrongful birth, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, interference with common law civil rights, liability for economic loss, interference with contracts, interference with business relations, unfair competition, common law rights to literary and commercial creations and ideas, trade secrets, and other economic torts including injurious falsehood. The fourth edition maintains the casebook's clear organization and rich range of cases from not only the United States, but also England, Canada, Australia and other common law legal systems--cases selected as the most valuable for instructional purposes as well as for their influence in shaping tort law. New cases and notes, addressing such developing areas as liability for defamation in Internet communications, bring the material fully up-to-date. The casebook has ample material for courses and seminars on economic torts (business torts) or defamation and privacy (tort law and the communications media).

A clear, concise, current, and authoritative explanation of all of the most important U.S. tort law doctrines, including those covered in first-year torts courses in law schools. Coverage includes tort law origins and objectives; causation; strict liability; negligence liability and defenses; intentional tort liability and defenses; special liability rules (premises liability, products liability, employers, etc.); damages; tort and contract; immunities; wrongful death and survival; defamation; privacy; misrepresentation.

This textbook is designed for use in upper-level law school courses. It reflects the belief that the most effective teaching materials for students beyond the first year of law school are centered on problems of the kind that lawyers face in practice. Other features of the book include: Clear Narrative Text. The chapters in Advanced Tort Law: A Problem Approach, Second Edition, focus on five intriguing subjects which normally receive little attention in basic torts courses: misrepresentation, defamation, invasion of privacy, tortious interference, and injurious falsehood. In each chapter, the law is laid out in a clear narrative format, which quotes liberally from pertinent court opinions, statutes, and other sources. Because upper-level law students are already well acquainted with the American litigation process, each topic focuses primarily on operative rules and policies, and their application to particular fact situations. The text minimizes the procedural complexities of cases that have already been decided. Fifty-Eight Discussion Problems. The main instructional feature of Advanced Tort Law: A Problem Approach, Second Edition, is the fifty-eight discussion problems. Roughly every eight to ten pages, there is a problem for students to prepare in advance of class. A good answer requires a confident grasp of the rules, concepts, and principles addressed in the text or in basic law school courses. The problems, which test whether students have learned the assigned material, are designed to form the basis for classroom discussions. If a class meets twice a week over the course of a typical law school semester, each reading assignment is likely to include about fifteen to twenty pages of reading material and two discussion problems. Other advanced torts books have few or no discussion problems, or contain discussion problems only in some chapters. Advanced Tort Law: A Problem Approach is the only textbook that uses discussion problems as the principal teaching device for every topic in the book. Preparation for Practicing Law in the 21st Century. Many of the problems in Advanced Tort Law: A Problem Approach are based on actual cases or stories in the news. With rare exceptions, the names have been changed. The facts in the problems often diverge from those which gave rise to the underlying disputes in order to raise questions important to the course. The discussion problems challenge students to explore how the law applies to the kinds of facts they will encounter in twenty-first century law practice. There is an abundance of citations to cases decided since 2000. The hypothetical scenarios are designed to help users of the book develop the problem-solving skills that effective lawyers need today. Cutting-Edge Legal Issues in the Digital Age. Although the torts discussed in this book are ancient in origin, they are often on the front lines of litigation in the Digital Age. There are abundant references to issues raised by recent communications technology developments, including blogging, texting, and social networking. The book addresses numerous practical questions that Americans confront in contemporary life, such as the liability issues that arise from anonymous postings on the Internet or from corporate press releases designed to mislead investors. This book also is available in a three-hole punched, alternative loose-leaf version printed on 8.5 x 11 inch paper with wider margins and with the same pagination as the hardbound book. The eBook version of this title features a link to Lexis Advance for further legal research options.

Advanced Torts focuses primarily on tort theories that are not covered in significant detail in the standard first-semester Torts course. However, the book explores these topics with a particular emphasis on how they apply to lawyers engaged in the practice of law. Thus, students learn about defamation, interference with contractual relations, etc. while reading cases and working through problems that frequently involve lawyers as litigants. Given the reality that a lawyer is more likely to be sued for malpractice or some related theory during the lawyer's career than it is the lawyer will face professional discipline, the subject matter of the book should resonate with students in a way that most Advanced Torts books do not. The book covers the theories of liability often addressed in Advanced Torts courses, and some of the cases do not involve lawyers as parties. In this sense, the book is general enough that it can be used in any Advanced Torts class. However, it also includes material that should be of special concern for lawyers, including several chapters devoted to legal malpractice. Thus, it could be used in an Advanced Torts class as well as a stand-alone class devoted to legal malpractice and related theories of liability. Throughout the book, the authors make a conscious effort to help aspiring lawyers develop their professional identities as they learn the doctrine. This book is part of the Context and Practice Series, edited by Michael Hunter Schwartz, Professor of Law and Dean of the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific.