Harold Luntz

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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.

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Career

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."

Related Research Articles

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.

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References

  1. "Professor Harold Luntz". University of Melbourne: Melbourne Law School. Retrieved 16 August 2010.
  2. "APLN People". Australian Private Law Network. Retrieved 16 August 2010.
  3. Cane, Peter (2003). "Reforming Tort Law In Australia: A Personal Perspective". Melbourne University Law Review. University of Melbourne.
  4. "OFFICER (AO) IN THE GENERAL DIVISION OF THE ORDER OF AUSTRALIA" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 January 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2019.