Liability law is rapidly changing in quite a number of countries. This is due to various factors, which are interrelated to a large extent: changing case law and legislation as well as increased and still increasing technical and medical knowledge. As a result, various occupational diseases can, for example, be attributed to working conditions or personal injury to specific products. From the very moment that causation can be proven, the question arises of whether or not liability can be established with far-reaching economic consequences for all parties involved.

The rise of phenomena such as mass torts, multiple causation, joint and several liability or various heads of damages (like ecological damage and several diseases and affections) rapidly increases the interest in tort law. In the context of the interrelation between liability and insurance, attention must be paid to the question of whether certain liabilities are still coverable or not, and, if they are, to what amounts.

(The question of jurisdictions is of growing importance as is the question of whether a specific liability can be covered by insurance. In this context, one should bear in mind that the affordability of tort law also requires safe and sound insurers. The recent past has shown that there is a limit to their financial stability.)

On 23 October 2024, the European Union passed an amended Product Liability Directive (PLD). In this book, an international team of scholars offers new perspectives on the most central questions at the time of implementation, such as whether the Directive adequately addresses AI, how far it includes services and information into its scope, and how its strategy for dealing with factual and scientific uncertainty plays out.

Autorentext

David Messner-Kreuzbauer, Institute for European Tort Law of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Graz