Aiding and Abetting Matters
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Sarah L. Swan
Abstract
Aiding and abetting is a popular and well-known basis of criminal liability. Yet its civil counterpart, civil aiding and abetting, exists in relative obscurity. Like criminal aiding and abetting, civil aiding and abetting is of ancient origin, but it has only achieved contemporary popularity in particular niche areas like business torts and human rights statutes. In some states, it currently exists in a strange legal limbo, with perhaps some specific forms of civil aiding and abetting recognized (like aiding and abetting fraud), but with its status as a general fount of tort liability uncertain.
This Article argues that the disregard for civil aiding and abetting is an error, as civil aiding and abetting can play an important role in remedying contemporary harms. Specifically, civil aiding and abetting can bridge gaps left by duty rules in negligence. This gap-filling function will be further enhanced if courts continue the nascent trend of accepting that in certain circumstances, a failure to act can be a form of substantial assistance. As our cultural understandings of complicity broaden, aiding and abetting can serve as an important tool for allocating responsibility and achieving just compensation. Although it is often mistakenly eclipsed by other forms of joint liability, civil aiding and abetting has significant independent value.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editor’s Introduction Symposium Issue: New Voices
- Articles
- Autonomous Vehicles, Technological Progress, and the Scope Problem in Products Liability
- Shifting Liability with Licensing: An Empirical Analysis of Medical Malpractice and Scope-of-Practice Laws
- Aiding and Abetting Matters
- The Tort of Outrage and Some Objectivity about Subjectivity
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editor’s Introduction Symposium Issue: New Voices
- Articles
- Autonomous Vehicles, Technological Progress, and the Scope Problem in Products Liability
- Shifting Liability with Licensing: An Empirical Analysis of Medical Malpractice and Scope-of-Practice Laws
- Aiding and Abetting Matters
- The Tort of Outrage and Some Objectivity about Subjectivity
