From: Peter
Cane <peterfcane286@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday
30 January 2025 23:01
To: Jane
Stapleton
Cc: A
Kumaralingam; Katy Barnett; obligations@uwo.ca
Subject: Re: VALE
Professor Harold Luntz AO
From
my perspective, Harold's passing sadly marks the end of an era in Commonwealth,
common law tort scholarship. Its beginnings can, perhaps, be traced to the late
1960s, with figures such as Terence Ison in Canada, Patrick Atiyah in England
and John Fleming in the US (physically, anyway). Deep dissatisfaction with the
ways the tort system dealt with personal injury and death claims spawned an
abolitionist agenda that has long since run its course. Harold was a convinced
abolitionist throughout his career (as I well remember when he gave evidence to
the Ipp Panel in 2002). Like Atiyah, Harold believed strongly in the importance
and value of empirical evidence about the operation of the tort system and in
the social significance of 'accident' law. At the same time, he had an
encyclopaedic knowledge of tort law, its rules, principles and process -
something he shared with John Fleming, for whom (in pre-internet days) Harold
provided a vital source of 'local knowledge' about Australian law. Harold read
everything, and he had an eagle-eye and extraordinary memory for detail. Like
both Atiyah and Fleming, Harold held views strongly, supported them solidly and
expressed them firmly (although without Atiyahan fireworks). Like Atiyah,
Harold had little time for 'theory', whether economic or philosophical. To
Harold, tort law mattered for what it did (or did not do), not for its 'inner
self'. In a review of the (posthumous) 9th edition of John Fleming's great
book, published in the Torts Law Journal (which Harold founded), I expressed
the opinion that we would never see his like again. I feel the same way about
Harold.
Peter
On
Thu, 30 Jan 2025 at 20:36, Jane Stapleton <bjs48@cam.ac.uk>
wrote: