Grief reactions and effective negotiation

Conclusion In the event of death, society has in place a wide range of rituals and supports designed to help mourners deal with their grief. It may be that assigning blame and seeking legal recourse has become a significant ritual for those who have sustained other types of losses and, in some situations, loss through death as well. However, unlike societal death rituals, which guide the mourners, no guidelines exist to help negotiators address the impact of grief on their clients. Thus, in this article, insights gleaned from studies of grief, loss, and separation have been examined in an effort to develop an awareness of the impact of grief reactions on the parties to negotiation.Grief reactions—ranging from denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and guilt to acceptance—serve a useful purpose for those who have sustained grievous losses. Consequently, a better understanding of grief factors may be advantageous to negotiators and, more importantly, to their clients. Such considerations may help challenge perceptions of other parties that may otherwise be prejudicial to one's client (as in the Lindy Chamberlain case) and assist negotiators in trying to anticipate, and thus protect their clients from, grief-related reactions of other parties. In the large number of cases where negotiation and settlement discussions are not only critical but also decisive, grief theory may provide negotiators with better insight into client, and other party, interests and may help them to formulate advice and intervention strategies that take the impact of various grief reactions into account. Nancy Lewis Buck is an attorney and social worker, currently completing a doctoral dissertation at Yale Law School. Her mailing address is 9 Surrey St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.     

Implementing the artist's resale right directive

Legal context: Directive 2001/84/EC, on the resale right for the benefit ofthe author of an original work of art, introduced the harmonisationof artist's resale right within the EU (and subsequently withinthe EEA). Resale right already existed in many EU States, butthe Directive also required its creation in others (such asthe UK) to which it was previously unknown. The implementationof the Directive in the UK was accordingly a matter of somecontroversy. Key points: This article concentrates on the legal difficulties involvedin that implementation, viewed against the background of theUK Government's stated general policy on the transposition ofEU Directives. From several points of view, the rules laid downin the Directive called for elaboration or clarification, andin a number of cases such an approach was appropriate. In othercases, however, this turned out not to be appropriate. Practical significance: As a result, although in the main it was possible to transposethe Directive into a clear and workable set of domestic rules,a number of issues had to remain unresolved. Among the mostimportant were: whether works of ‘applied art’ shouldattract resale right, and the territorial scope of the transactionscovered by the right.     

Court Awards of Damages for Loss of Future Earnings: An Empirical Study and an Alternative Method of Calculation

This article examines the effect upon damages for personal injury of methods used in the United States of America to calculate loss of future earnings. The work of lawyers is examined from the perspective of labour economists. The damages calculated by using these alternative methods are compared with those actually awarded in over a hundred cases determined by courts in England and Wales. This interdisciplinary and comparative study reveals that the tort system fails to satisfy one of its main objectives in that it does not provide recipients of damages with 'full' compensation.     

The future of Fair Trade coffee: dilemmas facing Latin America's small-scale producers

Fair Trade has become a dynamic and successful dimension of an emerging counter-tendency to the neo-liberal globalisation regime. This study explores some of the dilemmas facing the Fair Trade movement as it seeks to broaden and deepen its impact among the rural poor of Latin America's coffee sector. We argue that the efforts to broaden Fair Trade's economic impact among poor, small-scale producers are creating challenges for deepening the political impact of a movement that is based on social justice and environmental sustainability. The study is based on two years' research and seven case studies of Mexican and Central American small-scale farmer cooperatives producing coffee for the Fair Trade market.     

The legal aspects of corporate computer usage policies

In this paper we examine the legal aspects of corporate computer usage policies including their creation, management, and their relevance to corporate computer forensic investigations. Misuse of corporate computing facilities cannot only lead to a reduction in employee productivity and network bandwidth, but can also increase the risk of infection of such facilities by computer viruses and other malicious code. Moreover, it may lead to the risk of liability and legal action.