From Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences:
If similar multipliers operate in other areas, the tax’s hidden impact on the way we live and do business may amount to a $300 billion dollar annual levy on the American economy.
The tax goes by the name of tort liability.
Book was written in 1990.
The author considers tort liability, in part, a tax:
Unlike better-known taxes, this one was never put to a legislature or a public referendum, debated at any length in the usual
public arenas, or approved by the president or by any state governor. And although the tax ostensibly is collected for the public benefit, lawyers and other middlemen pocket more than half the take.
This is relatively new in our legal landscape:
For all practical purposes, the omnipresent tort tax we pay today was conceived
in the 1950s and set in place in the 1960s and 1970s by a new generation
of lawyers and judges.
and
Tort law as we know it is a peculiarly
American institution. No other country in the world administers anything remotely like it.
Definition of tort law:
Tort law is the law of accidents and personal injury.
According to the author people used to handle accidents by contract beforehand:
Most accidents were handled under the broad heading of contract —the realm of human cooperation—and comparatively few relegated to the dismal annex of tort, the realm of unchosen relationship and collision.
After all (this came before the part quoted immediately above):
More often than not, both parties to a transaction recognize there is some chance of misadventure, and prudently take steps to address it beforehand.
After I go through the book a bit more I’ll share more.