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PARTIAL LIABILITY

Kaiserman

Legal Theory1 Mar 2017Open access

NobleIDark:/48914/w1/20260521/72E89596DOI10.1017/s1352325217000040

Abstract

Abstract In most cases, liability in tort law is all-or-nothing —a defendant is either fully liable or not at all liable for a claimant's loss. By contrast, this paper defends a causal theory of partial liability. I argue that a defendant should be held liable for a claimant's loss only to the degree to which the defendant's wrongdoing contributed to the causing of the loss. I ground this principle in a conception of tort law as a system of corrective justice and use it to critically evaluate different mechanisms for “limiting” liability for consequences of wrongdoing and for “apportioning” liability between multiple wrongdoers.

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