Emergency suicide care in France: the psychiatrist's liability as seen in case law

In France, in general emergency departments, psychiatric consultations are on the increase and suicidal behavior represents a frequent reason for consultation. Psychiatrists treat patients whose behavior may be impulsive and irrational, and whose critical judgment is impaired. In emergency units, the reception and initial assessment of the patient determines his or her future pathway through the healthcare system. By its very nature, emergency medicine deals with inherently unstable situations, which may lead to the risk of medical malpractice. The aim of this article is to provide a summary of the initial management of suicidal patients by general emergency units and to comment on the medical malpractice that may expose the practitioner to risk of liability. An analysis of case history has shown that in suicide cases, malpractice due to inadequate supervision is the most frequent ruling.     

Legal education in France and England: A comparative study*

Abstract

Despite the fact that part‐time law students comprise a significant proportion of law undergraduates, there continues to be an absence of legal research that considers the experiences and aspirations of such students as a distinct group. Against this backdrop, it is argued that these students require further research and attention for a number of reasons. First, their location allows a consideration of the extent to which broader governmental objectives for higher education are being met within law schools. Second, the extent of their presence in higher legal education places an important obligation upon law schools to explore the specific needs of this cohort and to consider the extent to which part‐time law students can be legitimately subsumed into the undergraduate cohort in terms of resources and planning. Third, the legal ambitions of many part‐time law students require a fresh consideration of the expectations of the recruiting legal profession and the legal profession's commitment to broadening social diversity within its ranks. Finally, as the experiences of part‐time and full‐time students become closer, a proper analysis of part‐time law students may provide invaluable information as to how law schools could adapt to meet the needs of all students in the future.     

Sexual harassment in higher education: a victim's remedies and a private university's liability

Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem in education. With victims of harassment pursuing administrative and judicial redress, an awareness of and a program for response to the sexual harassment issue are good risk management strategies for a private university and its staff, employees, and students. This article examines, first, the two types of sexual harassment recognized by law; second, the situations in which harassment in the educational context may occur; and, third, avenues of recourse for the victim of sexual harassment and the responsibility and liability of the private university when the harassment is reported or discovered. It is designed to inform and educate the faculty and administrators of private universities about the legal implications of their response to notice of sexual harassment.     

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.     

The cost of delegated control: vicarious liability, secondary liability and mandatory insurance

Vicarious liability, secondary liability and mandatory insurance are three systems for attaining judgment-proof or disappearing injurers’ precaution through the direct control of a second party (the vicariously liable principal, the secondary liable party, or the insurer). In this way, the legal system delegates control over some injurers to private entities. Such mechanisms generate monitoring costs. In this paper, we consider who bears the cost of such monitoring, and the effect thereof on the equilibrium level of precautions under different liability rules. We use these findings to explain some of the patterns in the coupling of substantive standards of liability and legal regimes of delegated control.