Economic Loss, 3rd Edition

Economic Loss, 3rd Edition: With a foreword by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers • Deals with situations in which one person's negligent act or omission causes another person to suffer a loss which is not to his person or his property, and where the relationship between them is usually non-contractual • Sets out and comments on the principles applied by the courts in pure economic loss cases • Covers general themes and alternative approaches before dealing with the broad categories of situations in which questions concerning pure economic loss and duties of care in tort arise • Discusses and analyses virtually all of the significant reported cases on this topic in England and the Commonwealth • Examines the principles applicable to the imposition of, or the refusal to impose, duties of care where the claimant’s loss/injury is to his person or to his property; particularly in the field of product liability and in relation to the acts or omissions of statutory authorities • Looks at the complex problem of the effect of the existence of a contract on the outcome of a pure economic loss duty of care claim in tort • Presents General Principles in Volume One and Specific Applications in Volume Two • Deals with very interesting cases, such as: a decomposing snail in a bottle of ginger beer, a night-watchman whose tea was laced with arsenic, lobsters that died in a tank before Christmas, a judge who said that there is no difference between a rodent and a gastropod, a typewriter factory whose keys were solidified, a Pentium III “ultimate media machine” which was anything but, one and a half dead flies in an unopened dispenser of purified drinking water, an advertising agency whose client failed to pay ‘as advertised’, a ship that sank after it was certified ‘good to go’, a tavern that lost business because a boat crashed into a bridge, two dead mice in two bottles of ginger beer, a gambler who was banned from buying too many lottery tickets, a trailer which became detached from a farmer’s Land Rover because the design of the coupler was deficient – was the manufacturer of the coupler liable for the dealer/retailer’s pure economic loss?, a garbage dump which could not burn the waste, a hotel which had to shut its cocktail bar, some bottles of a Bacardi mix which were not ‘a breeze’, a dredging operation that was too silty, a compulsive gambler who went to the dogs, an asbestos worker whose pleural plaques were not actionable, an auctioneer who was out-bid by foot and mouth disease, a potato farmer who was devastated by bacterial wilt, a railway company whose parapet walls were demolished, a lorry that collided with a fire hydrant, a building-owner who was out-negotiated by the Government, a set of accounts which had been certified as balanced but weren’t, a truck-driver who overshot a driveway, a soldier who shot his girlfriend’s lover, a house inspector who said “no responsibility” and the Lords who said ‘yes responsibility’, a home decorator who left the front unlocked when he stepped out to buy some wallpaper – did he cause the homeowner’s loss in the ensuing burglary?, a soldier who choked on his own vomit, some Borstal Boys who trashed some yachts, lots of houses with shaky foundations, a couple who lost $30m to a fraudster and almost got their bank to pay for it, an abattoir whose dividing wall was not high enough, an asset-freezing Order that didn’t, a factory-owner whose diesel storage tank’s tap did not have a lock, a video shop manager who was beaten up in the car park, a remand prisoner who died after a policeman left the wicket hatch open, four Kuwaiti commercial aircraft which were destroyed by Coalition aerial bombing in Iraq, a very honest patient with cauda equina syndrome, an asbestos worker who worked for several employers but could not say which of them caused his mesothelioma, a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patient whose negligent doctor got off Scot-free, a wedding guest who died after eating ras malai that contained eggs and a swimmer who drowned in a pond that was contaminated with Weils disease.