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Search Results
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THE LOSS OF CHANCE DOCTRINE IN THE COMPARATIVE LAW HORIZON
The legal theory of loss of opportunity generates genuine fascination. While it has been accepted by several jurisdictions in recent years, it is still being debated in others that had previously accepted it. However, this notion’s popularity contrasts with the lack of clarity regarding its scope of application and legal regime, which has led to somewhat uncontrolled case law. Against this back drop, the present paper seeks to offer a comparative analysis of how the loss of opportunity theory is perceived and implemented in some of the most significant jurisdictions within the common law and civil law traditions. Despite the disparity of approaches observed in the comparative landscape, this paper identifies the rules on which there seems to be agreement, as well as the alternative solution that has been adopted by jurisdictions that have rejected the theory.
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PANORAMA DE LA RESPONSABILIDAD CIVIL DE LOS PROFESIONALES SANITARIOS POR WRONGFUL BIRTH Y WRONGFUL LIFE
A lo largo del siglo xx se ha producido un incremento de las demandas de responsabilidad civil, así como, especialmente, de responsabilidad civil médica. Este incremento ha llevado a la pretensión de reparación de nuevos tipos de daños, entre ellos, los daños asociados al nacimiento o a la vida. En este trabajo se analizan dos de estas nuevas pretensiones de reparación de daños (las acciones de wrongful birth y wrongful life), en las que se plantea la posibilidad de reclamar responsabilidad a un profesional sanitario en el supuesto de nacimiento de un niño afectado por enfermedades o defectos físicos o síquicos de los que no fueron informados los progenitores previamente a la concepción o durante el embarazo. El análisis se aborda desde la perspectiva de la concurrencia de los elementos de la responsabilidad en ambos tipos de demandas. Dos de ellos, el daño y la relación de causalidad, aparecen como los principales obstáculos a la pretensión de indemnización ejercitada por los progenitores y por el niño en estos casos.
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LIABILITY AS A FORM OF PRIVATE IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPETITION LAW
This article tackles private antitrust enforcement, focusing on one of its concrete expressions: tort liability, in particular between rivals. Using elements of foreign and Chilean law, this article shows that tort liability makes a limited contribution to the deterrence and punishment of anticompetitive conduct. First, antitrust infringements impair mainly consumers and markets as a whole, whilst tort liability is esentially an instrument of compensation for the harm that those acts inflict on individual and identifiable victims, like competitors. Secondly, the complex proof of harm and causation significantly restricts the chance of obtaining redress, thus diminishing the effectiveness of tort liability as a deterrent to anticompetitive behaviour.
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COMPARED RESOURSES RELATIVE TO THE DETERMINATION OF A CAUSAL LINK. AN ANALYSIS FOCUSED ON EVENTS RELATED TO HEALTH RESPONSABILY
The scientific certainty linked to technological development impacts on victims in this xxi century, particularly, in the accreditation of the causal link, which is always necessary to justify a tort action. Sensitive trials, many of them related to public health, largely shows the problem we intend to study. Comparative law has exposed this difficulty, arriving at solutions that show an interest into make flexible rules of evidence in favor of the proposed causality. We’ve found in our research the recourse to the solidarity responsibility, and to a lesser extent the proportionate responsibility, as well as the evidential presumptions by way of diverse mechanisms of causal inference. These solutions represent responses of legal adaptation which have been observed in order to provide guarantees to the damaged that, in a scientific doom scenario, has been affected twice: whether about their apparent damage, whether about the causal uncertainty that threatens her compensation.
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FUNDAMENTALS OF GERMAN MEDICAL LIABILITY LAW IN THE FIELD OF AESTHETIC SURGERY
The German medical liability law makes a distinction between the responsibility for treatment mistakes and responsibility for lack of information. Interventions in aesthetic surgery is, as a rule, a medical practice when the physician is below the standard in force in the respective special field of aesthetic plastic surgery. However, in the case of lack of information liability (tort) is based on bodily injury, according to the jurisdiction of German courts is inherent in any medical intervention in body or health status of the patient. However, bodily injury is not considered unlawful if the patient, after having been duly informed, has given valid consent (informed consent). Informed consent, which the treating party should give evidence at trial, can justify the bodily injury. In the aesthetic operations it is of practical importance, above all, the responsibility for insufficient information on the risks of the respective intervention. If aesthetic surgery, as no medical indication occurs often, the requirements for patient information are particularly stringent. In this sense, the jurisdiction requires a extensive, intense and sometimes “thoughtless” information about imminent risks, in the case of offset to some extent the purely “aesthetic indication” by the qualified patient consent after extensive information (intensely informed consent ). If it is found that the information was insufficient, doctors and hospitals may be liable for damages and ordered to pay compensation for personal injury.