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56 Vand. L. Rev. 977 (2003)
Comparative Fault to the Limits

handle is hein.journals/vanlr56 and id is 991 raw text is: VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW

VOLUME 56                            MAY 2003                            NUMBER 4
Comparative Fault to the Limits
Ellen M. Bublick*
I.       INTRODU    CTION   .................................................................... 978
II.      DEFINING PLAINTIFFS' OBLIGATION OF CARE: THE
RESTATEMENT OF LIABILITY FOR PHYSICAL HARM ............. 984
III.     COMPARATIVE FAULT AND ITS LIMITS ................................. 988
A.        The Form    of Limits ................................................. 989
B.        The Role of Principle or Policy ............................... 991
C.       Traditional Lim      its .................................................. 993
D.        The Rationale for Limits ........................................ 994
E.       Principle and Policy Factors .................................. 999
1.       Plaintiff Incapacity ...................................... 999
2.       Structural Safety     ........................................ 1004
a.      Experience Differentials ................... 1004
b.      Education and Information
D ifferentials ...................................... 1007
c.      Control Differentials ......................... 1012
d.      Com  binations .................................... 1016
3.       Role  D  efinition  ............................................ 1017
4.       The Values of Process ................................. 1021
a.      Litigants' Welfare ............................. 1021
b.     Administrative Ease ......................... 1022
c.      Absolute Judgments ......................... 1022
5.       Fundamental Values .................................. 1023
Associate Professor of Law, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.
A.B., Duke University; J.D., Harvard Law School. For helpful comments and suggestions, I
thank Graeme Austin, Anita Bernstein, Dan Dobbs, Oscar Gray, Mike Green, Toni Massaro,
Richard Posner, Jamie Ratner, Ted Schneyer, Anthony Seebok, Aaron Twerski, Richard Wright,
participants in the Negligence in the Law Symposium at IIT-Kent Law School and the faculty
workshop series at Brooklyn Law School, and the editors of the Vanderbilt Law Review. Thanks
also to my exceptional research assistants Kai Yu, Jo Evelyn Ivey, and Lisa Vander Vliet who
helped me find and think through the interesting set of cases that underlie and shape this
argument. I am also grateful to alumni James Rogers and Steve Hirsch for their generous
financial support of faculty scholarship.

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