Remedies for Dishonest Assistance

The paper considers the nature of claims against dishonest assistants and the various money remedies those claims may evoke. Dishonest assistance is a form of civil secondary liability whereby the assistant is held jointly and severally liable along with the trustee whose misconduct he assisted. This is the sense in which dishonest assistants are said to be accountable as constructive trustees. In order to understand remedies available against dishonest assistants it is accordingly necessary to understand the corresponding remedies against defaulting trustees and what it means for them to be accountable. The paper examines the two different types of compensation that may be awarded against defaulting trustees—substitutive and reparative—and observes that the same two types of compensation may be given against dishonest assistants in appropriate cases. It also explores the circumstances in which trustees and dishonest assistants should be accountable for profits and whether they should ever be liable to pay exemplary damages. A strict application of the theory of civil secondary liability produces controversial results in connection with these latter remedies.     

Drug use and violence: Rethinking the connections

This paper examines the available empirical and theoretical literature on the connections between drug use and violent crime, using the conceptual framework developed by Goldstein (1985). The authors argue that the available evidence on the drugs/violence nexus does not support moral claims about the ‘harmfulness’ of illegal drugs that underpin the criminalization of certain mind-active drugs. Instead, much of the connection between legal and illegal drug use and violence appears to be an effect of a history of criminalization of certain drugs. Law is therefore implicated in producing the connection between drug use and violence, rather than acting simply as a neutral mechanism for controlling criminal violence.     

An Analysis of Statutory Development: The Correlates of State Activity in Product Liability Legislation

In the last few years legal scholars and politicians have been concerned with what many have referred to as the "liability crisis". While there is certainly no consensus involving precisely how serious the problem indeed, some argue that there is no crisis -there is some evidence that the frequency and size of jury awards in some types of personal injury cases have changed since the 1970s. In response to this evidence virtually every state has considered legislation that would limit the frequency or size of such awards and would modify related judicial processes. Although the final status of many of these "tort reforms" is still uncertain, bills related to punitive damages and other dimensions of tort Iiability have been introduced in and passed by one or more houses in many state legislatures. This paper examines this legislative activity and focus on bills that have passed in one or more state legislative houses in the 1986–88 time period. Using standard multivariate statistical techniques, it examines the relationship between this legislative activity and dimensions of state politics and culture. The research indicates that state legislative activity in the area of tort reform results from a rather complex mix of factors. It is a function of political and social-economic attributes, as well as features of the states' legal and judicial systems.     

microRNA Detection in Blood,Urine, Semen,and Saliva Stains After Compromising Treatments

Evaluation of microRNA (miRNA) expression as a potential method for forensic body fluid identification has been the subject of investigation over the past several years. Because of their size and encapsulation within proteins and lipids, miRNAs are inherently less susceptible to degradation than other RNAs. In this work, blood, urine, semen, and saliva were exposed to environmental and chemical conditions mimicking sample compromise at the crime scene. For many treated samples, including 100% of blood samples, miRNAs remained detectable, comparable to the untreated control. Sample degradation varied by body fluid and treatment, with blood remarkably resistant, while semen and saliva are more susceptible to environmental insult. Body fluid identification using relative miRNA expression of blood and semen of the exposed samples was 100% and 94%, respectively. Given the overall robust results herein, the case is strengthened for the use of miRNAs as a molecular method for body fluid identification.