Harold 'Harry' Luntz AO (born 1937 in South Africa) is an Australian law professor. He is widely acknowledged as one of Australia's leading experts on torts law.
Luntz was educated at Athlone Boys' High School in Johannesburg and graduated from the University of Witwatersrand with degrees in arts and law. He served three years’ articles of clerkship at the same time as undertaking his law degree. In 1960, he was employed for a brief period as a solicitor in a firm of solicitors in Johannesburg and then took at Bachelor of Civil Law at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. He began publishing in academic journals in the early 1960s. Some of his appointments:
He was editor of the Australian Torts Law Journal. [2] He wrote a text in 1974 that saw its fifth edition in 2008 ('Assessment of Damages for Personal Injury and Death'). This text is widely quoted in the highest courts of Australia, as well as England, Canada and the United States.
He is officially retired from University work, but he continues to maintain an office, teach, write essays and mark exams. Despite being an expert on negligence, he is a leading advocate of 'tort law reform' policy, that would replace the law of negligence with a no-fault compensation scheme, and/or provide such adequate social welfare that the awarding of damages becomes unnecessary. [3]
He remains one of the world's foremost scholars and theoreticians of torts and damages law. On Australia Day (the 26th of January), [4] he was awarded an AO for "distinguished service to legal education, as an academic and editor, to professional development, and to the community."
At common law, damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss or injury. To warrant the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused foreseeable loss. To be recognised at law, the loss must involve damage to property, or mental or physical injury; pure economic loss is rarely recognised for the award of damages.
Negligence is a failure to exercise appropriate and/or ethical ruled care expected to be exercised amongst specified circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by failing to act as a form of carelessness possibly with extenuating circumstances. The core concept of negligence is that people should exercise reasonable care in their actions, by taking account of the potential harm that they might foreseeably cause to other people or property.
Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause. Although the word "product" has broad connotations, product liability as an area of law is traditionally limited to products in the form of tangible personal property.
A tort is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with criminal wrongs that are punishable by the state. While criminal law aims to punish individuals who commit crimes, tort law aims to compensate individuals who suffer harm as a result of the actions of others. Some wrongful acts, such as assault and battery, can result in both a civil lawsuit and a criminal prosecution in countries where the civil and criminal legal systems are separate. Tort law may also be contrasted with contract law, which provides civil remedies after breach of a duty that arises from a contract. Obligations in both tort and criminal law are more fundamental and are imposed regardless of whether the parties have a contract.
Punitive damages, or exemplary damages, are damages assessed in order to punish the defendant for outrageous conduct and/or to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some of the punitive damages in award.
The system of tort law in Australia is broadly similar to that in other common law countries. However, some divergences in approach have occurred as its independent legal system has developed.
In some common law jurisdictions, contributory negligence is a defense to a tort claim based on negligence. If it is available, the defense completely bars plaintiffs from any recovery if they contribute to their own injury through their own negligence.
In the English law of tort, professional negligence is a subset of the general rules on negligence to cover the situation in which the defendant has represented him or herself as having more than average skills and abilities. The usual rules rely on establishing that a duty of care is owed by the defendant to the claimant, and that the defendant is in breach of that duty. The standard test of breach is whether the defendant has matched the abilities of a reasonable person. But, by virtue of the services they offer and supply, professional people hold themselves out as having more than average abilities. This specialised set of rules determines the standards against which to measure the legal quality of the services actually delivered by those who claim to be among the best in their fields of expertise.
Monash University Faculty of Law, or Monash Law School, is the law school of Monash University. Founded in 1963, it is based in Melbourne, Victoria and has campuses in Malaysia and Italy. It is consistently ranked as one of the top law schools in Australia and globally, and entry to its Bachelor of Laws (LLB) programme is highly competitive.
Glanville Llewelyn Williams was a Welsh legal scholar who was the Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1978 and the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London, from 1945 to 1955. He has been described as Britain's foremost scholar of criminal law.
The Melbourne University Law Review is a triannual law journal published by a student group at Melbourne Law School covering all areas of law. It is one of two student-run law journals at the University of Melbourne, the other being the Melbourne Journal of International Law. Students who have completed at least one semester of law are eligible to apply for membership of the editorial board. Applicants are assessed on the basis of their performance in a practical exercise, academic aptitude, proofreading skills, editing skills and enthusiasm. The 2023 editors-in-chief are Isabella Conte, Nuria Khasim and Rajesh Varghese.
Melbourne Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of the University of Melbourne. Located in Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne Law School is Australia's oldest law school, and offers J.D., LL.M, Ph.D, and LL.D degrees. In 2021–22, THE World University Rankings ranked the law school as 5th best in the world and first both in Australia and Asia-Pacific.
Tort reform consists of changes in the civil justice system in common law countries that aim to reduce the ability of plaintiffs to bring tort litigation or to reduce damages they can receive. Such changes are generally justified under the grounds that litigation is an inefficient means to compensate plaintiffs; that tort law permits frivolous or otherwise undesirable litigation to crowd the court system; or that the fear of litigation can serve to curtail innovation, raise the cost of consumer goods or insurance premiums for suppliers of services, and increase legal costs for businesses. Tort reform has primarily been prominent in common law jurisdictions, where criticism of judge-made rules regarding tort actions manifests in calls for statutory reform by the legislature.
Professor Ian Ramsay is Harold Ford Professor of Commercial Law, Melbourne Law School and director of their Centre for Corporate Law and Securities Regulation in Melbourne, Australia. He is an academic lawyer, author, and prominent media commentator on corporate law and securities law issues in Australia.
Peter Louis Waller was an Australian jurist. He was particularly well known for his work in evidence, medical and criminal law. He was Sir Leo Cussen Professor of Law at Monash University from 1965 until 2000, and thereafter Emeritus Professor. From 1968 to 1970 he was the Dean of the Faculty of Law at Monash University. From 1982 to 1984 he was the Law Reform Commissioner of Victoria. In 1984 he was appointed the Chairman of the Law Reform Commission, and from 1986 to 1992 he served as a part-time Commissioner. He has also served as the chairman of a number of medical and legal organisations, including the Infertility Treatment Authority, International Humanitarian Law Committee of the Australian Red Cross Society, Ethics Committee of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, and the Appeals Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Professor Waller previously served as Visiting Professor and Research Fellow in several universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Israel.
David Andrew Ipp was a South African-born Australian lawyer, judge and Commissioner of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption between 2009 and 2014.
Rear Admiral Harold Hyam Glass was an Australian judge and naval officer. He served on the Supreme Court of New South Wales, the New South Wales Court of Appeal and was Judge Advocate General for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).
Ian Freckelton is an Australian barrister, judge, international academic, and high-profile legal scholar and jurist. He is known for his extensive writing and speaking in more than 30 countries on issues related to health law, expert evidence, criminal law, tort law, therapeutic jurisprudence and research integrity. Freckelton is a member of the Victorian Bar Association, the Tasmanian Bar Association, and the Northern Territory Bar Association in Australia.
Ariel Porat is the president of Tel Aviv University (TAU), a full professor and former dean at TAU's Buchmann Faculty of Law. Until his appointment as president, he was a distinguished visiting professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, incumbent of the Alain Poher Chair in Private Law at TAU, and recipient of The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture for Legal Research.