Chapter 24: From Contributory to Comparative Fault

American law

American law

The turning point in ________ was a modest little dispute in 1850 in Massachusetts about using a stick to break up a dogfight.

Criminologists

________ might investigate the behavior of victims as factors generating crime, but the approach of the law, quite rightly, is to treat the criminal as the aggressor solely responsible for the harm.

Strict liability

________ in tort is based on the same image of aggression against a passive victim.

Direct causation

________ is part of the idea of aggression.

The conflict between these two approaches came to a head when the California Supreme Court turned to the interpretation of a provision in the 1872 California Civil Code, which reads as follows

§ 1714 Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his property or person, except so far as the latter has, willfully or by want of ordinary care, brought the injury upon himself

aggression

Criminal law is about ____________.

model of interaction

In the history of tort law, the _________________ gradually triumphed over the paradigm of aggression.

contribute

“It takes two to tort”; If the victim’s nose is in the way of the defendant’s fist, then both ______________ to the punch in the nose.