An overview of some unexpected consequences of compensation law

Prue Vines Arno Akkermans Prue Vines is Professor and Co-Director, Private Law Research and Policy Group at the Faculty of Law, UNSW Sydney. Arno Akkermans is Professor of law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and director of the Amsterdam Law and Behaviour Institute (A-LAB) . Compensation law concerns the legal recognition of wrongs which cause harm and the giving of compensatory awards in recognition of the wrong and the harm. The area of personal injury is particularly significant and is often thought of as the primary area of compensation law, with a focus on negligence, workers’ compensation and other schemes; but other areas of private law are also significant where personal injury and/or economic loss may arise. Thus compensation law may encompass a range of causes of action and a large range of systems, all of which are aimed at compensating persons for their harms. Unfortunately, it has become clear that...