The single best event I attended at AALS in DC (besides, of course, the Texas party) was by Andrew McClurg at Florida International.  He presented his article Dead Sorrow: A Story About Loss and a New Theory of Wrongful Death Damages, 85 B.U.L.Rev. 1 (2005), in a session on compensation.

The article is fascinating and moving — yes, I did just describe a law review article as moving.  He provides a wrenching account of the sudden death of his fiance Kody Logan, exploring his grief and the grief of her family in coping with the (tortious) car accident that took her life.  He also discusses his challenges in advising her family: “How do you explain to a mother who has just lost her only daughter that the value of her life under the law is literally zero?”  (Page 6.)

Ultimately, McClurg concludes that wrongful death suits fail to account for two important aspects of a death: the value of the decedent’s life itself and the grief suffered by her survivors.  To deal with this failure, he proposes “damages for the lost value of life” that would

be used for the exclusive purpose of establishing a lasting memorial to the decedent.  Such a solution would promote both the economic deterrence and corrective justice models of tort law and serve, albeit indirectly, to compensate the decedent by continuing his or her memory and place in this earthly world.  Additionally, the memorial established with the lost life damages would, at no additional cost, provide a proven grief-healing instrument for all persons who mourn the decedent’s passing.  Finally, because it is recommended that memorials created with lost life damages be required to serve a utilitarian function, another unique aspect of the proposal is that it would allocate tort damages in ways that benefit society in addition to tort victims, enhancing the net social benefit of the tort system.

(Page 9, footnotes omitted.)

I’ve assigned the article as part of my survival/wrongful death section in my evening Torts class (which is full year) and expect to add it to my syllabus in the future.  My hope is that it brings a reminder of the realities that the tort system seeks to deal with to a section of the course that can sometimes be rather technical.

The article is not online so far as I can tell, but is of course available via Westlaw and Lexis.

Photo of Christopher Robinette Christopher Robinette

Christopher J. Robinette, an expert in tort law and theory, was appointed Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in 2021.  He teaches Torts, Products Liability, and Foundations of Tort Law Seminar.

Professor Robinette serves as the United States Representative to the European…

Christopher J. Robinette, an expert in tort law and theory, was appointed Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in 2021.  He teaches Torts, Products Liability, and Foundations of Tort Law Seminar.

Professor Robinette serves as the United States Representative to the European Group on Tort Law.  In 2012, Robinette was elected a member of the American Law Institute (ALI); in 2019, the ALI Council appointed him as Adviser to the Restatement of the Law Third, Torts.  Robinette also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Tort Law, the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to tort law in the United States, where he previously served as editor-in-chief. He serves as an editor of a leading torts treatise, Harper, James & Gray on Torts, and a leading insurance treatise, New Appleman on Insurance Law Library Edition.  Additionally, Robinette edits TortsProf Blog, a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network. He is an elected member of the European Centre for Tort and Insurance Law and a contributing editor at JOTWELL Torts. Robinette served as chair of the AALS Torts & Compensation Systems Section in 2017.

He has presented on tort law across the United States and the world, including the United Kingdom (Oxford), Poland, Austria, and Malaysia (where he won a “Best Paper” award).  Professor Robinette’s work has been cited by federal and state courts in numerous jurisdictions.  He is frequently quoted in the media in outlets such as the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, and The Washington Post.

Before coming to Southwestern, Robinette was Professor of Law at Widener University Commonwealth Law School, where he won both scholarship and teaching awards on multiple occasions.  In 2018, he received the Lindback Foundation’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Widener, a university-wide recognition awarded to one professor per year.  Robinette was also a visiting professor at the University of Iowa and Washington University in St. Louis.

Robinette served on the Advisory Board of Salvation Army corps in both Charlottesville, Virginia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; he was Chair of the Harrisburg Capital City Region Advisory Board from 2010-2012.  He was a member of the UPMC/Pinnacle Health Ethics Committee for several years, primarily addressing end-of-life issues.

Robinette litigated tort and contract cases prior to becoming a law professor, experiences he uses to engage students in his classes.

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