“Concluding the Restatement (Third) of Torts” at Southwestern Law School

Byron Stier and I are pleased to announce “Concluding the Restatement (Third) of Torts” at Southwestern Law School on March 24, 2023:

Since the early 1990s, the American Law Institute has been drafting the Restatement (Third) of Torts.  That effort, down to a handful of projects, is within several years of completion.  Leading scholars, judges, and practitioners, many of them Reporters or Advisers for the final portions of the Restatement, will gather at Southwestern Law School to discuss significant remaining issues.  Occurring during the drafting process, the symposium is designed to affect positively the Restatement, and thus the law.

Sponsored by the Southwestern Law Review, Southwestern’s Panish Civil Justice Program, and the American Law Institute, the symposium will commence with a welcome by Justice Goodwin Liu of the California Supreme Court and the Council of the American Law Institute and will also include a luncheon keynote address by Brian Panish ’84, one of the nation’s leading trial lawyers.

The first panel will focus on the appropriate role of theory in the Restatement process.  The second panel will address issues of medical malpractice, including the proper standard of liability and California’s MICRA cap on damages, recently raised for the first time since its enactment in 1975.  The third panel will consider the controversial question of whether and how to recognize claims for medical monitoring in the context of the affirmative stance taken in the current draft of the Restatement.  Panel four will discuss issues in damages; many of the most heated disputes in tort law concern the proper amount of compensation to be paid for tortious injuries.  The symposium will conclude with a Reporters’ Roundtable, in which three sitting Restatement Reporters provide their analyses of key points from the day.

Speakers include Reporters Nora Freeman Engstrom, Mike Green, and Mark Hall, as well as Mark Behrens, Judge Kevin Brazile, Martha Chamallas, Mark Geistfeld, Deborah Hensler, Keith Hylton, Greg Keating, Nina Kohn, Justice Goodwin Liu, Brian Panish, Rex Parris, Phil Peters, Victor Schwartz, Tony Sebok, Cathy Sharkey, Ken Simons, David Studdert, and Adam Zimmerman.

More information is here.