Business, Defamation, and Privacy Torts
Files
Description
Business, Defamation, and Privacy Torts by Richard A. Epstein and Catherine M. Sharkey organizes topics suitable for an advanced, upper division course (or seminar) on Torts. When and why, if ever, are economic harms—as opposed to physical and emotional harms—recoverable in tort? There are certain breaches of duty for which pecuniary losses must be honored, lest the common law fail in its promise to prevent force and fraud. Just as we all enjoy the right to be free from the threat of physical harm, so too we have the right to receive protection for the ability to make new contracts free from threats of force and force, and to be assured that others will not seek to knowingly induce breach of our existing contracts. Additionally, we also deserve to have our reputation, and those of our goods and services, protected from harmful falsehoods. Also, privacy rights of two sorts also receive protection: first the right to keep personal information about ourselves private, and second to control the use of name and likeness in commercial and business ventures. The expansion of liability in these areas may at once be novel, dubious, and nonetheless potentially morally and socially desirable. Students must examine the full policy and doctrinal challenges of these debates. Setting selective limits on the recovery of pecuniary losses is how the common law has adapted to economic advancements since its early creation in England. From the Statute of Labourers of 1349 to the artificial intelligence controversies of today, students will be able to grapple with these legal adaptations to social change.
Publication Date
2-1-2025
Publisher
Aspen Publishing
Recommended Citation
Richard A. Epstein & Catherine M. Sharkey,
Business, Defamation, and Privacy Torts,
(2025).
Available at:
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/1030
