Common Sense Morality and Accident Compensation

Abstract

Accident victims in this country receive compensation and support from a multitude of sources with widely varying criteria of entitlement. One of the oldest among these is the tort system of compensation for personal injury. The law takes the position that losses arising from accidents rest where they fall — that is, on the victim — unless there are good grounds for shifting them, and fault is regarded as providing such grounds. Atiyah (1975) expresses this ‘fault principle’ as follows:

First, that it is just that a person who causes loss or damage whether to himself or another, should bear the burden of that loss or damage to the extent that it was caused by his fault. Second, that it is just that a person who causes loss or damage to another without fault should not be required to compensate that other (p. 415).