Indiana Tort Claims Act: Fill & Download for Free

Yesterday, the Fifth District issued its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law (Phase One Trial) in MDL 2179, In Re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "Deepwater Horizon", a 153-page diatribe condemning BP's "negligence," "extreme deviation from the standard of care" and "conscious disregard of known risks."Judicial "Phase One" had one question: Who are we going to blame? Four years later, the judge says: Blame BP.Halliburton (3%) and Transocean (30%), said the judge, were also "negligent or worse."But BP (67%) was also "reckless." It was BP's decisions that were "a substantial cause of the blowout, explosion, and oil spill."The Judge cited the Restatement (Second) of Torts explanation of "reckless":"[T]he actor knows ... facts which create a high degree of risk of ... harm to another, and deliberately proceeds to act..."Alternately, "[T]he actor ... does not realize or appreciate the high degree of risk involved ..."Yes, Transocean made mistakes. Yes, Halliburton made mistakes. But "BP had a hand in most of these failures."Halliburton gets off the hook on page 139. The judge blames it for (1) defective cement work and (2) not monitoring the well from whence the oil gushed. He called Halliburton's mistake "egregious".Halliburton is responsible for the unstable foamed cement that was involved in the oil rig incident. This is one of the reasons you want to blame Halliburton.The judge saw it this way: "[T]hose claims fail in light of the finding that the cement, however defective, was not a cause of the blowout."Halliburton's dangerously inept monitoring of the well paled in comparison to what BP did -- conduct so extraordinarily awful, said the judge, he believed "punitive damages would be appropriate" -- BUT HE ALSO wrote that under Fifth Circuit precedential law, BP could not be held liable for punitive damages." Hail Brittania.The catastrophic damage of this event makes it hard to weigh, rationally, who did what and how guilty they are. That's not because one party is British, and the other is American. It's because the damage was apocalyptic.But BP is not a first time offender. BP's rap sheet includes the special permit it obtained in 2007 from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to dump mercury into Lake Michigan. I'm furious about this. And not because BP is British.When BP's rig blew up in the Gulf, no expense was spared to soften the hit on its image.Anti-British sentiment by the judge? No, sir. This was a rational, reasoned decision made by the Louisiana federal court.I hate Halliburton. But this nightmare, in the end, was largely the fault of BP. And like it or not, you, too, across the pond will be dealing almost certainly with the environmental consequences of what BP has done to Planet Earth, for generations to come.

I don't know the specifics of this claim (it's not one of the ones I've heard of before), and since I no longer have access to Lexis/Nexis it's hard for me to research it specifically. But when I was in law school, on a lark, I took a list of "dumb laws that are still on the books" and spent a couple of days researching their origins.A few of them really were statutes, ordinances, or regulations that had once been adopted (e.g. one from Texas that really did require automobiles to be preceded by a person carrying a red flag or lantern), but which (despite the claim) had long since been repealed, amended, or otherwise rendered inactive.A few were outright misstatements by journalists that got widely spread and were never true in the first place, and a handful were proposed laws that were never adopted but which got reported by journalists as if they were the law.The vast majority, however, arose from civil judgments in cases with often truly bizarre fact patterns. For example, there's one floating around that says that you can't sell both toothpaste and a toothbrush in to the same person in Rhode Island on a Sunday. This was the arguable misreporting of a civil case involving a commercial dispute in Rhode Island that did indeed involve the sale of both toothpaste and a toothbrush to the same customer on a Sunday, in a manner that was in fact illegal, but the case did not establish a general rule and there never was a statute on the books that actually prohibits such activity anywhere in Rhode Island. Nonetheless, this particular factoid remains widely distributed as a "dumb law that's still on the books". Law of the case is often really weird, because weird stuff happens all the time. Journalists love to write stories about the strange and weird, and often these get picked up, spread about, and mangled until they bear little resemblance to the truth. Virtually all reported "dumb laws" are of this nature, with a grain of truth to them, but only that. Out of about 30 "dumb laws" I researched, over half fell into this category. One of them I stumbled across (pun intended) while reading cases for my Torts class (having to do with someone who fell into an uncovered manhole, which I recognized from one of those Reader's Digest articles I'd read years previously when I read the case for class), which is what prompted me to do the research in the first place.But there's another category in which these arise, and that's the countless attempts to ban "houses of ill repute" without actually saying that's what they're doing, and I think that's where this particular one likely falls. This particular "dumb law" is almost certainly an attempt to ban a bathhouse. Bathhouses are, of course, well-known to be places where men of ill repute (that is, gay) congregate and engage in vile unspeakable acts of debauchery and must therefore be banned. But one doesn't want to ban all public bathing facilities, since otherwise you'll have a bunch of filthy people wandering about with no means to bathe (this is from the days that there was a substantial migrant population, and many more people had no running water in their homes, so many people did in fact use public bathing facilities on a regular basis). Since lawmakers didn't want to actually ban public bathing facilities, what they would do is identify activities that someone might want to do at a bathhouse filled with debauchery but nobody would presumably ever do at a well-behaved public bath, and make those illegal. Indiana still to this day bans serving food or drinks in a restroom, for the exact same reason.There was likely, in whatever community in Pennsylvania from where this particular "dumb law" springs, some bathhouse that featured musical entertainment of some sort, and the local authorities latched onto this as a feature that was "unnecessary" for a legitimate public bath and banned such activity as a way to make the nuisance they wanted to get rid of illegal without actually saying that's what they were doing. This then gets written up as it "being illegal to sing in a bathtub", which isn't really what the law said, and absolutely is not the intent of the law, but it makes for good copy, and off we go. Another urban (or in this case, more likely, suburban) legend is born. (It’s entirely possible that the law in question was never actually adopted; indeed, often the intent—and effect—of the journalistic ridicule is to shame the legislative body in question into not adopting the law.)If someone tries to tell you that some "dumb law" is still on the books somewhere, demand that they cite you chapter and verse. Odds are they can't; either it's been repealed, or it never was a law in the first place.

A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship. In contrast to other terms for legally operative language, the term disclaimer usually implies situations that involve some level of uncertainty, waiver, or risk.A disclaimer may specify mutually agreed and privately arranged terms and conditions as part of a contract; or may specify warnings or expectations to the general public (or some other class of persons) in order to fulfill a duty of care owed to prevent unreasonable risk of harm or injury. Some disclaimers are intended to limit exposure to damages after a harm or injury has already been suffered. Additionally, some kinds of disclaimers may represent a voluntary waiver of a right or obligation that may be owed to the disclaimant.Disclaimers vary in terms of their uniformity. Some may vary depending on the specific context and parties involved, while other types of disclaimers may strictly adhere to a uniform and established set of formalities that are rarely or never modified, except under official authority. Some of these formal disclaimers are required pursuant to industry regulation, qualification for protection under a safe harbor, and other situations where the exact wording of a particular clause or document may be dispositive in the event of a legal dispute. (See e.g., Product liability, Toxicity Class, Rule against perpetuities, Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act.)The presence of a disclaimer in a legally binding agreement does not necessarily guarantee that the terms of the disclaimer will be recognized and enforced in a legal dispute. There may be other legal considerations that render a disclaimer void either in whole or part.TORTIn law, a disclaimer is a statement denying responsibility intended to prevent civil liability arising for particular acts or omissions. Disclaimers are frequently made to escape the effects of the torts of negligence and of occupiers' liability towards visitors. The courts may or may not give effect to the disclaimer depending on whether the law permits exclusion of liability in the particular situation and whether the acts or omissions complained of fall within the wording of the disclaimer.A disclaimer may take effect as a term of the contract between the person making the disclaimer and the person who is thereby prevented from suing. This kind of disclaimer is, for example, invariably found in the 'terms and conditions' that a software user is confronted with when first installing the software. There will often be term(s) excluding any liability for any damage that the software might cause to the rest of the user's software and hardware. By clicking "I Agree" in the dialogue box, users are agreeing to this disclaimer as matter of contract between themselves and the software company.IDisclaimer of liability for "equine professionals" (Indiana)At common law, disclaimers can also have effect as conditions of a license (i.e. permission) to enter land. An occupier of land will have certain duties to take care for the personal safety of people he or she allows onto the premises. By placing a sign at the entrance to the premises, such as "visitors enter at their own risk", the occupier may be able to stop entrants successfully suing in tort for damage or injury caused by the unsafe nature of the premises. Warnings or disclaimers contained in signs may, by a slightly different legal analysis leading to the same result, allow the person who would otherwise be responsible to rely on the defense of consent.Under UK law, the validity of disclaimers is significantly limited by the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. By virtue of the Act, a business cannot use a contract term or a notice to exclude or restrict its liability for negligence causing death or personal injury. In the case of other loss or damage, a disclaimer will only be effective so long as it is reasonable in all the circumstances. The common law in other nations may also place legal limits on the validity of disclaimers; for instance, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has previously successfully sued Target Australia for the usage of inaccessible disclaimers in advertisements (the televised advertisements in question contained disclaimers that were only shown on screen for 1.50 seconds).In the United States, disclaimers on the sale of goods are covered by Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, but details vary by state. Unless considered unconscionable, disclaimers are generally enforceable as part of a contract between knowledgeable parties of comparable bargaining power, but most states do not allow a party to limit their liability for gross negligence.Patent lawMain article: Disclaimer (patent)In patent law, a disclaimer identifies, in a claim, subject-matter that is not claimed.By extension, a disclaimer may also mean the action of introduction a negative limitation in a claim, i.e. "an amendment to a claim resulting in the incorporation therein of a "negative" technical feature, typically excluding from a general feature specific embodiments or areas".The allowability of disclaimers is subject to particular conditions, which may vary widely from one jurisdiction to another.A prosecution disclaimer is another type of disclaimer in patent law. Under United States patent law a prosecution disclaimer is a statement made by a patent applicant during examination of a patent application which can limit the scope of protection provided by the resulting patent. It is one type of file-wrapper estoppel, the other being prosecution history estoppel.Estate lawIn estate or inheritance law, a disclaimer (also called disclaimer of interest) is a written document voluntarily signed by an heir to an estate in which the said heir does not accept (disclaims) the part of the estate of a deceased person which the heir is entitled to receive. The disclaimed part of the estate is then inherited not necessarily by a person of the disclaiming heir's choice, but by the next heir in line to receive that part of the estate as if the disclaiming heir were also deceased, either according to the will, beneficiary designation, or the laws of intestacy. Government tax agencies have further rules on such disclaimers. Reasons for such disclaimers may include imminent death of the disclaimant or the fact that the disclaimant already has enough wealth.LiteratureThe all persons fictitious disclaimer is a standard disclaimer used in works of fiction in an attempt to avoid liability for defamation.In the case of fan fiction, the author will usually give a disclaimer saying that the author of the fan fiction does not, in any way, profit from the story and that all creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator(s).