Institutional Tort Feasors: Systemic Negligence and the Class Action
Tort Law Journal, Vol. 2, 2006
42 Pages Posted: 6 Mar 2006
Abstract
A theory of systemic negligence as founding institutional liability for harm to children ("abusive institutionalisation") is currently developing in Canadian courts. The courts have allowed class action certification on the basis of a common issue of systemic negligence in several recent cases. The author suggests that, through the class action for systemic negligence, the common law is filling in those conceptual gaps that had made the alternative redress system seem a more complete and appropriate response to abusive institutionalisation. Legal theories of institutional responsibility also explain the phenomenon of abusive institutionalisation, not as an unpredictable aberration but as a preventable organisational disaster.
Keywords: systemic negligence, institutional abuse, class action, vicarious liability
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