Search results

Part I of this Article traces Washington's history with the common law doctrine of government immunity from tort liability. It also identifies other distinct common law immunities protecting executive, legislative, and judicial functions-immunities that lay dormant during the reign of sovereign immunity. Part II discusses the legislature's broad waiver of sovereign immunity in 1961 and the legislature's subsequent reaffirmation of the waiver. It also notes isolated instances in which the legislature has partially restored immunity or otherwise limited tort liability. Part III addresses the development of case law interpreting the scope of government tort liability in light of the legislative waiver of sovereign immunity and examines the impact of the remaining related common law immunities for executive, legislative, and judicial functions. Part III also examines the role of the "public duty doctrine," which has evolved as a conceptual framework for assessing whether a predicate duty supports government tort liability in any given circumstance. Finally, Part IV exalts the continuing value of holding government accountable for its tortious conduct, treating such accountability as a legitimate means to encourage responsible government and achieve individual justice. Part IV also urges that any marked retreat from the broad waiver of sovereign immunity is unnecessary and unjustified, whether viewed from a fiscal or ideological standpoint.

Actions alleging municipal tort liability for negligent administration of building and zoning codes are part of the current judicial and legislative trend to abolish municipal tort immunity. In surveying how such actions are treated, this Comment briefly examines the historical background of governmental immunity. It then categorizes the states according to the scope of governmental tort immunity currently recognized. After establishing these categories, this Comment applies the law under each category to the facts of Preston v. City of Daniellville, the hypothetical case. It then analyzes the public duty defense raised by the municipality, focusing on the origin of the defense and on its continued use as a municipal defense to negligence actions. This Comment concludes by recommending one type of governmental tort claims act which best balances the equities between the injured individual and the municipality.

It is not too much to say that the municipal law of every civilized state
recognizes certain rights as belonging to every individual, including the right to property, the violation of which constitutes a tort. Municipal law also very generally recognizes certain duties as attached to every individual the breach of which, coupled with consequent damages to another, is a tort. Thus, a tort is sometimes defined as a private or civil wrong or injury, and sometimes as the breach of a legal duty.

Western societies are witnessing an emerging socio-legal trend towards transnational civil litigation against multinational corporations in relation to harm caused to people and planet abroad. Increasingly, individuals and communities from developing host countries who have been detrimentally impacted by the local activities of multinational corporations turn to Western society home country courts to address and seek redress for their harm through private law mechanisms. One of the main driving forces behind this development has been provided by the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), an obscure 1789 US federal statute that has since the 1980s been used as a legal basis for tort claims before US federal courts relating to international human rights violations perpetrated anywhere in the world. Since the late 1990s, dozens of ATS-based civil claims have been brought against a score of multinational corporations that have found themselves subject to the exercise of personal jurisdiction by US federal courts. Well-known are the claims against Shell for its alleged involvement in human rights violations perpetrated by the Nigerian government against environmental activists in the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta. Similar transnational civil liability claims against multinational corporations have been brought before courts in other Western societies, like the UK, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands. In the absence of a specific statute such as the Alien Tort Statute, these claims have typically been based on general principles of tort law and the tort of negligence in particular. Recent examples include: the civil claims pursued in the UK against Trafigura for its involvement in the Probo Koala toxic waste dumping incident in the Ivory Coast; and the tort claims against Royal Dutch Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary relating to oil spills in the Niger Delta, which are currently pending before the The Hague district court. These 'foreign direct liability cases' arise against the background of a global governance gap that ...