Tort law in practice: appearance and reality in reforming periodical payments of damages
Paying damages for personal injury in the form of a lump sum is again under attack. Almost twenty years ago the concept of a structured settlement was first used in the UK in order to provide continuing lifetime payments for seriously injured claimants. However, the idea was slow to develop. Proposals for a structure were easily defeated if either of the parties objected. To counter this, recent legislation has removed this veto: taking into account the needs of the claimant, a judge can make a periodical payments order even if it is against the wishes of both parties. 
 
This article looks at the impact of this reform upon the settlement system and the bargaining power of the parties. The relationship between the new legislative regime and that involving structured settlements is examined. The reform is set in its wider political and economic context. In particular, it is shown to be based, firstly, on an inadequate assessment of the problems caused to insurers, and secondly, on excessive concern about the impact of litigation upon National Health Service budgets. Deferring the full payment of damages to later years is politically attractive, and gives the state an interest in the form in which damages are paid. This was insufficiently acknowledged in the reasons given for the reform. There are sharp differences between the surface appearance of the legislation and the realities of practice.
A comparative study of fundamental rights in South Africa and Ireland with specific emphasis on human dignity
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ACCIDENT LIABILITY RECONSIDERED: THE IMPACT OF LIABILITY INSURANCE
DURING the formative period of most of the current doctrines of negligence law, liability in tort was looked on as shifting a loss that had already occurred from one individual to another-generally from the person who suffered the loss to the person who caused it. It is against the background of this way of looking at things that nearly all of our conventional reasoning about the objectives of tort law has developed and that nearly all of our conclusions have been drawn and our rules formulated. But society has no interest in the mere shifting of a loss between individuals just for thte sake of shifting it. The loss, by hypothesis, has already happened. A has been killed, or his leg broken or his automobile smashed up. If the only question is whether B shall be made to pay for this loss, any good that may come to society from having compensation made to one of its members is exactly offset by the harm caused by taking that amount away from another of its members. In that view of the problem there had to be some additional reason for a defendant to compensate a plaintiff for his injury before society would compel compensation. These reasons might be (a) a feeling of what is fair or just; (b) a desire to discourage dangerous conduct, or of course a combination of both. To a very considerable extent this last-named desire was tempered by a strong counter-desire not unduly to discourage enterprising affirmative activity-even when it was dangerous-because people were very much imbued with the idea that unfettered enterprise and activity in nearly all directions worked out through the laws of competition to promote the general good. And again, these matters of fairness and deterrence were all considered on the assumptions that plaintiff and defendant were alone involved and that what happened between them was the real issue-that tort liability was paid for out of the defendant's own pocketbook. This focussed attention on the moral quality of the conduct of the individual participants in the accident. The net result was the general principle of no liability without fault. There is however an altogether different approach to tort law. Human failures in a machine age cause a large and fairly regular-though probably reducible-toll of life, limb, and property. As a class the victims of these accidents can ill afford the loss they entail. The problem of decreasing this toll can best be solved through the pressure of safety regulations with penal and licensing sanctions, and of self-inter-