Environmental Liabilities of Property Owners: Examples of Common Risks and Strategies to Anticipate and Avoid Them

Property owners are subject to potential environmental liability from a number of sources including strict statutory liability for remediation of contamination on their properties as well as liability for conditions within their buildings. These latent environmental risks are often exposed in the context of a transaction, redevelopment, or change of use. Commonly used due diligence protocols can avoid or mitigate many risks but owners need to be aware of the limitations and pitfalls of due diligence. In many circumstances, environmental insurance should also be considered as part of the overall environmental risk management strategy.     

Fly by Night or Face the Music? Premature Dissolution and the Desirability of Extended Liability

Premature dissolution can be a rational corporate response tothe threat of future liability. Although early dissolution iscostly to a firm, liability may be more so. The way in whichliability rules can exacerbate this extreme form of liabilityavoidance is of interest, since "fly-by-night" firms generateparticularly large social costs. In particular, we explore theconsequences of liability that is extended to the business partnersof an insolvent or absent tortfeasor—a relatively commonlegal response when tortfeasors abandon obligations. Extendedliability can be desirable; however, if extended liability isanticipated, business partners themselves may choose to flyby night. We show how the preferred liability rule, includingno liability, depends on the relative costs of premature dissolutionand future obligations. The analysis also sheds light on a setof interrelated legal issues, such as the role of the trustfund doctrine and state dissolution statutes.     

论行政法上的连带责任

《最高人民法院关于审理行政许可案件若干问题的规定》第13条在行政法上确立了一个新的连带责任类型,即行政主体和私人共同承担连带责任。行政法上的连带责任应从行政主体之间的连带责任拓宽到行政相对人之间的连带责任以及行政民事连带责任,应从行政许可与行政赔偿领域拓宽到行政处罚等其它领域。行政法上连带责任的实现有赖于建立或重构行政诉讼和行政赔偿诉讼第三人制度,建立行政案件与民事案件的合并审理机制。行政主体在承担责任后要向作为连带责任人的第三人追偿,则有赖于建立"官告民"的行政诉讼机制,否则只能通过民事诉讼机制去追偿。     

侵权补充责任之理性审思与解释适用

《侵权责任法》仅列举了侵权补充责任的数类适用情形,缺乏统一的客观适用标准,亦未明确具体的适用规则.责任分担是责任成立的后续命题,不应再以责任构成原理为立论基点,而应以外部被侵权人受偿及内部各侵权人终局责任分担为考量因素.按份、连带责任的终局责任分担困境及不真正连带责任全额赔偿的僵化,使得补充责任不可或缺.由该正当性可推知,侵权补充责任应适用于“具有全部原因力的直接作为侵权＋过失不作为侵权”之一般情形.补充责任人应承担与过错、原因力相当的补充责任,并可向直接责任人全额追偿.     

我国侵权法上特殊数人侵权责任分担制度立法体例与规则研究——兼评《侵权责任法（二次审议稿）》第14条及相关条文

从法律适用规则、内部责任份额和立法技术规则等角度可以将四种数人侵权责任分担形态区分为两类：一般数人侵权责任分担形态（包括按份责任形态和连带责任形态）、特殊数人侵权责任分担形态（包括补充责任形态和不真正连带责任形态）。立法技术上,在一般规则部分对特殊数人侵权责任形态的基本制度应予以规定,而对适用过错责任或过错推定责任的侵权行为类型的补充责任形态和适用严格责任的侵权行为类型中的不真正连带责任形态应予以全面列举。     

Tacit collusion and liability rules

This paper demonstrates that the likelihood of tacit collusion in a given oligopolistic industry may depend on the kind of liability rule applied to the industry. We study typical settings for the analysis of product liability and environmental liability. For the latter, it is established that tacit collusion is more likely under strict liability than under negligence. However, the two liability rules are equivalent with regard to their effects on tacit collusion in the model pertaining to product liability. This context-dependent impact on tacit collusion can be traced back to a difference in the shape of firms’ cost functions.     

论未办理抵押登记时不动产抵押合同的效力——兼评《〈民法典〉担保司法解释》第46条

当事人订立抵押合同的目的在于设立抵押权,未办理抵押登记的抵押合同无法在当事人之间产生设立保证或者其他非典型担保的效力。抵押人未按照约定办理抵押登记时的违约损害赔偿责任采用严格责任原则,其违约损害赔偿的范围限于债权人未从债务人处获得清偿的债权数额,同时,该责任受到当事人约定的担保范围、抵押权能够设立时抵押人应当承担的责任范围以及违约责任减轻规则的限制。抵押人未办理抵押登记的,债权人有权选择请求抵押人承担继续履行的责任与违约损害赔偿责任,并有权选择请求债务人或者抵押人承担责任。     

Managed care liability today: laws, cases, theories, and current issues

Managed care entities face numerous liability issues in today's changing healthcare environment. This Article provides the plaintiff with a comprehensive road map for navigating the many avenues of managed care liability. The author describes ERISA pre-emption provisions and suggests ways plaintiffs' attorneys can strive to narrow the pre-emption. The Article also provides in-depth analysis of each theory of managed care liability that has been litigated against managed care entities to date, and then goes on to explore state laws imposing liability on managed care entities, and how HMO liability is being reformed through legislative action. For plaintiffs' attorneys seeking the full spectrum of theories of managed care liability, or for defendants' attorneys wanting to remain updated on all potential claims to defend, this Article constitutes an extensive primer on the current issues.     

公物致害责任与建筑物危险责任比较研究

与物有关的侵权,根据损害结果与物的危险性之间的关系,可以分为物之侵权、物上行为侵权和单纯行为侵权三类。其中物之侵权根据公物和私物在公共使用性上的根本差异,可以区分为公物侵权和私物侵权,公物侵权构成公物致害责任,而私物侵权中不动产侵权构成建筑物危险责任。公物致害责任与建筑物危险责任既存在相似性,又存在差异性,其差异性本质...     

In Defence of Quasi‐Contract

Restitution scholars are almost unanimous in rejecting the term quasi‐contract. This essay challenges this view. It begins by demonstrating that many debates among restitution scholars are in fact debates about the boundaries of consent‐based liability. This serves as an introduction to the main thesis advanced, which is that the idea of quasi‐contract, which is supposed to cover cases in which the parties would have made a contract if conditions allowed them to do so, helps to explain the doctrine better than the conclusory language of unjust enrichment. The essay concludes by situating the argument within the growing literature on the normative foundations of restitution. It argues that quasi‐contractual liability should be understood not as part of unjust enrichment, but as a different basis of liability that can help us see what liability for unjust enrichment might be: liability grounded in notions of fairness.     

我国《公司法》修订中商事连带责任的重构——基于“连带”的历史发展脉络

我国《公司法》存在用连带责任替代连带之债、连带责任与无限责任、补充责任混同使用的现象,给理论与司法实践造成困扰。究其原因是对商事连带责任与民事连带责任的关系界定不清,对公司法中的商事连带责任制度缺乏体系化思考与精细化设计。连带之债起源于罗马法的整体之债,形成于中世纪注释法学的理论抽象,发展于近现代民法。近现代商法将法定原因连带责任引入商事规范,构建了商事连带责任制度。商事连带责任与民法连带之债共同具有给付与清偿的整体性特征,但商事连带责任也具有自身的商事特性。由于商事信义义务的道德标准高于民事诚信义务,商事法定连带责任相对于民事连带责任的适用范围更为广泛。基于商事领域的公司股东有限责任制度,商事连带责任可为有限连带也可为无限连带。我国《公司法》未来的修订应在我国《民法典》连带之债规定的基础上对商事连带责任进行体系化贯通,谨慎设定法定连带责任,厘清连带责任与无限责任的关系,对有限连带责任与无限连带责任、连带清偿责任与补充清偿责任进行细化区分。     

Scope of liability: the vanishing distinction between negligence and strict liability

The duty-of-care requirement cannot be used anymore as the touchstone to differentiate negligence from strict liability because it can be found in many forms of the latter. Duty of care is smuggled into strict liability hidden under the scope of liability requirement (traditionally called “proximate causation”). As far as the scope of liability requirement is common to negligence and to many forms of strict liability, there is a fairly large common ground to both liability rules, and consequently the marginal Hand formula is applied to both rules. Indeed, under a negligence rule, the marginal Hand formula is applied twice: first to assess whether or not the defendant did breach his or her duty of care, and, second, to delimit whether or not the defendant’s behavior was a proximate cause of the harm suffered by the victim. However, under a strict liability rule, the Hand formula is applied only once when the proximate causation question is raised. Traditional law and economics analysis has almost always taken the normative question raised by the causation requirement as given, which is a potential major problem due to the importance of scope of liability or proximate causation in legal practice. Defining the scope of liability, that is to say, the boundaries of the pool of potential defendants, is the basic legal policy decision for each and every liability rule. In the normative model presented in this paper, the government first chooses efficient scope of liability, and given the scope of liability, the government then decides the liability rule and damages that guarantee efficient precaution. In the article, most known scope of liability rationales developed by both common law and civil law systems are discussed in order to show the substantial common ground between negligence and strict liability.     

侵权法上的原因力理论研究

在数人的分别加害行为不构成一个整体原因但致受害人同一损害后果之情形,需要解决多数加害人的责任分配问题。在受害人有过错而减轻或免除行为人责任之情形以及共同侵权责任人在承担连带责任后内部分割责任份额之情形,也需要相应的规则来分配责任。过去的理论比较侧重于从过错中寻找答案,而作者认为对这些情形的责任分配之基本规则主要应当是原因力,即主要依据各当事人的分别行为对同一损害后果之发生所起作用之大小确定其责任,但是这并不否认比较过错规则在一些案件中的作用。     

International Economic Criminal Law

This inquiry explores the question of transnational companies’ criminal liability for international crimes, reviewing the current state of research in the field of international economic criminal law, a discipline that hitherto has received only scant analysis. Following some preliminary conceptual remarks (I.), the forms of corporate participation in such crimes (II.) and the supranational and national practice since Nuremberg are presented. This practice reveals a clear trend towards corporate liability, albeit represented by leading company staff. For this reason, and because legal persons (companies) ultimately act through natural persons (their staff), their liability (IV.) cannot be convincingly established on a purely collective basis – in the sense of a pure organisation model (IV. 4.1.) – but only on the basis of the attribution model, namely as a derivative corporate liability based upon supervisory or organisational culpability (IV.4.2.). The attribution model’s individual approach – or, to use procedural terms, the individualistic “trigger” for the prosecution of companies – finally brings us to the well-known forms of criminal participation (V.), with liability for complicity in particular coming into question. All in all, the essay concludes (VI.), we should not expect too much of (international) criminal corporate liability. Here, as in many other areas, criminal law can only have a (limited) preventive effect as part of a holistic approach.     

论我国政府采购法的法律责任

政府采购法属于行政法,其法律责任以行政责任为主,包括民事责任和刑事责任。对我国政府采购法的法律责任进行必要的分析,就可以发现政府采购法的法律责任的主要缺陷。完善政府采购法的法律责任:建立法律责任基金制度,完善法律责任追究制度,细化有关法律责任条款。     

论侵害人不明的大规模产品侵权责任：以市场份额责任为中心

对侵害人不明的大规模产品侵权，美国司法界使用市场份额责任对受害人加以救济，通过历史和理论的分析，可以发现所谓市场份额责任实际上是择一责任的原告在无法起诉所有被告情况下的一种特别处理而已。而择一责任则与大陆法系语境中的共同危险行为有着很大程度上的同一性。那么在承认后者的我国存在着市场份额理论一定的适用空间。     

Economic models of compensation for damage caused by nuclear accidents: Some lessons for the revision of the Paris and Vienna Conventions

In this paper the economic analysis of accident law is used to examine the liability for nuclear accidents. It is argued that the classic system of individual liability of a nuclear power plant operator with a financial cap on compensation and individual insurance by national pools is not effective. The current system leads to a too low compensation for victims and lacks an adequate internalization of the nuclear risk. Hence, it is argued that the economic analysis of law can provide useful insights for the revision of the Paris and Vienna Conventions on the liability for nuclear accidents. It is also argued that higher amounts of compensation can be generated only if the idea is accepted that all plants share the costs of an accident wherever it occurs. This could be realized through a mutual pooling system. Such a system could also be fitted into the revision of the Paris and Vienna Conventions.     

医疗管理损害责任与法律适用

医疗管理损害责任是《侵权责任法》规定的医疗损害责任中的一种具体类型,与医疗伦理损害责任、医疗技术损害责任和医疗产品损害责任一道,构成医疗损害责任的类型体系。医疗管理损害责任应当适用《侵权责任法》第54条的规定确定赔偿责任,但与该法第34条第1款规定的用人单位责任构成竞合关系,受害患者可以根据自己的利益选择法律。     

Criteria for Allocation of Responsibility under State Law

Numerous state statutes provide guidance for allocating responsibility and response costs among potentially responsible parties at environmentally contaminated sites. Twenty-eight states explicitly or implicitly address joint and several liability; thirty states address allocation criteria; and two states identify how orphan share costs are shared. Of the thirty states that address allocation criteria in their statutes, twenty-four specify one or more criteria that may be applied to avoid joint and several liability, and twenty-nine permit the allocation of responsibility using unspecified equitable factors. The state allocation criteria tabulated and discussed in this article can be used by counsel and their technical consultants and experts to assess which, if any, state-specific criteria are most applicable to a particular site, given the technical, historical, financial, and regulatory information that may be available for that site.