Filters

Search for: [Abstract = "Even among the lawyers the American tort law results in false assumptions. There are many popular misconceptions concerning this law system and especially the amounts of awarded damages. The awarded damages reaching millions of dollars have become legendary and many trials have become the objects of jokes. Moreover, there is a belief that American tort law is immeasurably different from Polish delicts. The key issue of this paper is the analysis of certain premises of American tort law and rebuttal of stereotypes. The study is concerned with the Liebeck v. McDonald’s case, commonly referred to as the “spilt coffee case”. The author considers the course of the legal proceeding and the fact that the media gave color to the truth of this case. The American media coined the phrase of frivolous lawsuits, i.e. the cases where plaintiffs are trying to extort money from big corporations by filling the lawsuits originating from frivolous reasons. In the Liebeck case, the plaintiff gained the punitive damages, which is an unknown institution in the civil law system. The punitive damages are very rarely judged in American courts and the existence of this institution is the main difference between the Polish and American tort systems. Besides that, the author aims to prove that there are more similarities than differences and that the main basis of torts and delicts is the same in both countries."]

Number of results: 1

Items per page:

This page uses 'cookies'. More information