...collides with Bill Hutchinson’s car. Janet sues Bill, claiming injuries caused by Bill’s negligence. Bill claims that Janet’s own negligence contributed to causing the accident. Contributory negligence would completely bar Janet’s claim, even though Bill is partly at fault, too. Comparative Negligence Dr. Turner malpractices, but the patient makes the situation worse by failing to take the prescribed medication. The jury decides the harm was caused 75% by the doctor and 25% by the patient. In such a case, the doctor would pay the patient 75% of her damages. Under comparative negligence, the party at fault pays the percentage damages he or she causes. Modified Comparative Negligence Some states create additional requirements if the plaintiff is partly at fault. These states require that the defendant’s fault meet a minimum threshold before the defendant has to pay anything. A common threshold might be requiring that defendant’s fault be greater than plaintiff’s. Example In the Dr. Turner case we just looked at, the doctor's negligence was greater than the patient’s negligence. The threshold is met and Dr. Turner pays 75% of damages. However, if the jury found the doctor 40% at fault and the patient 60% at fault, Dr. Turner would pay nothing because the threshold was not met. An Example of Assumption of Risk in a Medical Context Dr. Miller explains to Steve Cassidy the risks and possible bad outcomes for a surgery that is being contemplated. Steve decides to have the...
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...and road transport owners around the world. SMRT International Pte Ltd services clients in various parts of the world and they are China, the Middle East, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (SMRT Corporation Ltd 2008-2012c). SMRT’s SMRT institute with world class programs and projects outside Singapore would help SMRT to have an edge in fast developing technology. Environmental Singapore is one of the tiniest nation on the globe. Streets in Singapore take up 12% of the Singapore complete area in comparison to 15% filled by housing (Nugroho et al. 2010). Since already roads have occupied considerable amount space in this small country, future roads will be underground, already rails have gone underground. Government is convinced that as the roads are increased the drivers on the roads...
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...volcano, triggered by gas drilling exploration. Since May 29, 2006, Lusi mud volcano in Porong sub-district, East Java, Indonesia has been spurting voluminous hot mud and gas, with uncertain knowledge when it will cease. The progressing eruption has been causing major impact on human life, social, economic and environment in this highly populated region. Breached regulations including Indonesian regulations, constitutions, and APPEGGA rules of conduct are outlined. There are five critical concerns related to ethical and professional conduct arising from the occurrence of Lusi mud volcano. The concerns include negligence to best practise procedures, particularly drilling in high pressure zone; conflict of interest between public, government and private sector; violence to human right, public safety; and crisis management related to mitigating the impacts on environment, social, economic especially in compensation process to the victims. 1. Introduction Sidoarjo/Lapindo Mud flow, is geologically identified as a mud volcano (Sawolo, et al 2009). It is generally known as Lusi, a short name of Lumpur Sidoarjo. Lumpur means mud in Indonesian language. Lusi mud volcano is located in Porong sub district, Sidoarjo Regency, East Java Province, Indonesia. It is located about 30 km south of Surabaya, capital city of East Java Province. Porong sub district is quite populous area covering 1 residential areas, agriculture zones and manufacture and business centres that ...
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...Religion in Singapore Singapore’s government has been applauded for its approach to attracting business and fostering social harmony, while simultaneously censured for being too restrictive and even dictatorial in its approach to public policy. Media coverage on the topic of religion in Singapore has been varied in both its tone and the sources from which it is derived; news media stationed outside of Singapore’s boundaries have depicted a largely positive view of interfaith relationships, while domestic media outlets have stressed the unrest caused by religious divisions amongst Singaporeans. Historically, Singapore was known as a port-city with an “entrepôt” style economy, primarily due to its proximity to major South Asian, commodity-exporting countries. Today, Singapore’s favorable tax laws continue to make it a central figure in the South Asian economic landscape. Singapore is a country of roughly 5.5 million people and, due to economy and geography, is a culturally diverse city-state. Primarily Chinese, Indian, and Malaysian peoples comprise Singapore’s citizenry, with western businessmen representing a small sliver of the population and a large portion of the country’s wealth. Religious diversity within Singapore remains high; an estimated 83% of the population subscribes to a religious belief system. There are five predominant faiths within the country, with no one comprising more than 30% of the population. In aggregate, members of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam...
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...did not approve on people that got divorces and it was what the bible said whenever they chose to get married. The first law of divorce would be during the first colonies. In America, the fault-based process of divorce remained mostly intact when the colonists arrived. A complete divorce-while necessary to prevent the moral complications of separated-but-married status-was possible, but very hard to get. As the 13 colonies became the 50 United States, the grounds for divorce had to be concrete, which enabled the ostensibly innocent or injured party to get relief in the form of the actual divorce. The reasons included desertion, adultery, regular inebriation and impotence, as well as the classic cruel and abusive treatment. While it was in the interest of the state to sustain marriages, the plaintiff had to come up with solid reasoning even when both parties wanted the divorce. It essentially had to be presented as a fight or fault-based case. Now, divorcing someone at that time would only have you in trouble with your local church. Since the beginning of the ninety hundreds the laws of divorce wasn’t true clear for the government it was only a state law until the 1950s. Around the mid-1950s in the U.S. several court rulings and state laws clearly recognized the many instances of no-fault reasons to end marriages. These included long-term separation, instances of...
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...visible formal system of government, and even if we pretend to have a government, this government is paralyzed, ineffective or better described, the Nigeria government is at the state of apathy; emotional emptiness, where human life has and given no value, where we danced away our sorrows, where we replaced grief with merriment, where our leaders party away while we die in hundreds, where casualty is lied about, and where terrorism is politicized at the expense of human lives. We should expect further less from a country that has been characterized despite its acclaimed democratization with inept leadership, nepotism, electoral malpractices, bigotry, religious crises, dishonesty, immorality, and favoritism among others. The problems facing the Nigerian nation-state are too many to mention but a few, the failure of leadership, unemployment, ethnicity and religious intolerance further disunite us, the lack of capacity to utilize natural resources, corruption which permeates not only every aspect of our political system but also, every aspect of our lives, and not long ago, militancy which leads to kidnapping, bunkering, and recently terrorism which has caused us more woes than any other. Though, they weren’t borne out of nothing, and it was as a result of causality, the principle that every event must have a cause. We’ve always played blame-game, and while the government, who is supposed to take responsibilities, blames others for it woes, citizens chose to fault the process in which...
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...his or her rights by the government. The Federal Tort Claim Act of 1946 is enacted to ensure the citizens of the United States will receive the proper compensation or if the citizens want to sue the federal government. The Federal Tort Claim Act of 1946 will provide the citizens of the United States enough cushion to go around the immunity for federal employees. Before the enactment of the Federal Tort Claim Act of 1946, the citizens would have no possible way of suing the federal government for wrongdoing. It allows federal employees the immunity from lawsuits regardless of the harm the employee causes a victim to suffer. The Federal Tort Claim Act of 1946 will provide citizens of the United States a way around immunity to sue the federal government; however, it would take the power to regulate a federal lawsuit claim and the courts to hear the case. Regardless of the First Amendment, allowing a citizen the right to address the grievance with the federal government that has no authority to allow it to occur. According to (Valparaiso University Law, 1980) Congress enacts a Court of Claims Act that allows a citizen to complain; however, it excludes torts or civil liability (Valparaiso University Law, 1980). Around the beginning of 1887 a new law, the Tucker Act is enacted to forbid torts against the federal government (Cornell University Law School, n.d.). From the 19th Century to the 21st Century various laws are enacted to allow the federal government civilly liable for actions...
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...Compensation culture and tort reform ‘Compensation culture’bhas been described as ‘an amorphous term’ by Morris.b It is generally used to connote a society in which there is a propensity for anyone who has suffered a personal injury to seek punitive damages through litigation from someone connected to the injury, whether or not anyone was actually at fault, thus implying unreasonable willingness to seek legal redress when things go wrong. Commentators such as Morris, Robins and Williams have debated the existence of a compensation culture yet, in 2005, the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee created a new session to investigate whether this compensation culture truly exists.bThe third report of this session is particularly illustrative, unequivocally stating that such a culture does not existband its existence is not a possibility in the near future.bThis report followed a publication by the Better Regulation Task Force (BRTF), which concluded that there is not a compensation culture, but that action was required to counter the popular perception that there is. Evidence from the Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU) supports this view as shown below. The CRU holds the most comprehensive and reliable data on the number of current personal injury claims as ‘all compensators must provide prompt notification to CRU of any claim for personal injury made against them.’...
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...Base isolation is to be slightly beneficial if the natural period of the building is relatively long but much less when the natural period is too short. Accordingly, these systems are applied to low-rise buildings with less frequency period in order to magnify the benefits and effects of the system. The most suitable buildings for seismic base isolation are the low to mid-rise buildings rested on hard soil. On the other hand, there are different base isolation systems that were fabricated in order to accommodate high-rise buildings thus the effects and benefits to be dispensed would be significant to that of the low to mid-rise buildings. According to MMEIR’s study that was presented by Rappler (2015), the buildings along the West valley fault line which will be affected by the coming quake, would incur given the statistics that 27% of mid-rise building would be partly damaged while 11% would be heavily damaged and 12% of high-rise buildings would be partly damaged while 2% would be heavily damaged. Considering Santa Rosa as a first class city in the province of Laguna and also known as the “Investment Capital of South Luzon“ initially occupied with establishments, company buildings, schools, universities, and different infrastructures, a big portion of the percentage presented by the statistical study would go to Santa Rosa, Laguna wherein the role of seismic base isolation would be in much relevance for the protection of the growing urbanization of this city....
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...Oceania, southeast of Australia, in the South Pacific Ocean. The 2 main islands are North Island and South Island. | Map | PopulationNZ: 4,438,393(Christchurch: 366,100) | HDI 0.913 (9th) | GDP (US $)$166 billion | GDP per capita (US $)$36,400 | Government Parliamentary democracy and a Commonwealth realm | Political Stability | What happened? | Magnitude / LocationSeptember 4th earthquake occurred along an east-west fault (not Alpine Fault), associated with the motion of the two tectonic plates. Fault that caused the earthquake was under the Canterbury Plains- flatlands between the Southern Alps and the Pacific Ocean. The quake was centred around 45km west of Christchurch. February 2nd epicentre was 10km away from Christchurch with a shallow focus of 5km. This earthquake caused much more damage and had a greater impact on the area. | Time / Speed of onset / DurationFriday, September 03, 2010 at 16:35 PMSaturday, September 04, 2010 at 04:35 AM at epicentre, lasting 40 seconds.February 02, 2011 at 12:51 PM, an aftershock of the September earthquake struck in the middle of a busy weekday, with correspondingly more lethal consequences. | Tectonic situation (words)New Zealand is located on a major plate boundary. The Alpine Fault is where the Pacific Plate meets the Australian Plate. | Tectonic situation (map) | Preparation /...
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...As if the hysteria of the tsunami striking Japan wasn't enough. 24 hours later horror struck at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Some might say the horror was caused by the natural disaster; however, it was caused by the owners of the power plant and their negligence towards the situation. According to a report on the disaster it stated the following.’’It was unprepared to face major disaster and government regulators and the Japanese utility that ran if knew for years that the plant wouldn't make it crisis.’’(1). The true culprit for this tragic event is negligence not an unavoidable natural disaster. The government knew that wouldn't survive a tragic event for years. This shows that the government had a great deal of responsibility of the disaster. Why you may ask? Well the government knew about the threat the plant was in ; however, they decided to leave the plants open and did not evacuate the population that surrounded the area of the plant's location. This caused the whole hassle of trying to prevent the plants from blowing up; therefore, If they had evacuated the area they wouldn't need to worry about the plants blowing up and affecting everyone...
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...Groundwater pumping could also put more stress on the San Andreas Fault (source 3).” Drilling holes in the ground, is just putting more stress on the San Andreas Fault. The San Andreas Fault will bring destruction to California and drilling holes will only cause more sinkholes. “You’ve got to put reasonable restrictions so people are only pumping out a reasonable amount of water that underlies their land, says Cadagan, who lives in Stanislaus County, and is suing farmers there for drilling wells without considering the environmental impact (source 3).” If California controls Aquifer, then people will not waste water. People will only get the certain amount of water they need, and not waste any water. California is in a drought, so we have to stop wasting so much...
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...Unions have a reputation of inspiring employee walk-outs, arbitrating grievances, and butting heads with employers. However, unions also possess positive qualities that a business may welcome. Unions have a wealth of knowledge in a variety of labor-related topics like labor laws. Further, unions typically understand the history of the laws, key rulings in court cases, and can quickly identify management errors. By listening, employers can both correct and create improved operating practices amongst the supervisors, practices that may assist in mitigating unwarranted grievances. Union stewards play a vital role in employee and management relations. Union stewards can quell a union grievance quickly thereby decreasing the permitted time allocated...
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...Northridge earthquake. This was the first earthquake to strike directly under an urban area of the United States since the 1933 Long Beach earthquake caused by the movement of huge blocks of the earth’s crust- the Pacific and North American plates. 2.0 CAUSE The earthquakes of California are caused by the movement of huge blocks of the earth's crust- the Pacific and North American plates. The Pacific plate is moving northwest, scraping horizontally past North America at a rate of about 50 millimeters per year. About two-thirds of this movement occurs on the San Andreas fault and some parallel faults- -- the San Jacinto, Elsinore, and Imperial faults . Over time, these faults produce about half of the significant earthquakes of our region, as well as many minor earthquakes.The last significant earthquake on the Southern California stretch of the San Andreas fault was in 1857, and there has not been a rupture of the fault along its southern end from San Bernardino to the Salton Sea since 1690. It is still storing energy for some future earthquake....
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...International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law relating to Bills of Lading ("Hague Rules"), and Protocol of Signature (Brussels, 25 August 1924) The President of the German Republic, the President of the Argentine Republic, His Majesty the King of the Belgians, the President of the Republic of Chile, the President of the Republic of Cuba, His Majesty the King of Denmark and Iceland, His Majesty the King of Spain, the Head of the Estonian State, the President of the United States of America, the President of the Republic of Finland, the President of the French Republic, His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, His Most Supreme Highness the Governor of the Kingdom of Hungary, His Majesty the King of Italy, His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, the President of the Latvian Republic, the President of the Republic of Mexico, His Majesty the King of Norway, Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, the President of the Republic of Peru, the President of the Polish Republic, the President of the Portuguese Republic, His Majesty the King of Romania, His Majesty the King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, His Majesty the King of Sweden, and the President of the Republic of Uruguay, HAVING RECOGNIZED the utility of fixing by agreement certain uniform rules of law relating to bills of lading, HAVE DECIDED to conclude a convention with this object and have appointed the following...
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