Faculty Colloquium with Samuel Beswick - The Defence of Public Necessity

Event Description

This paper challenges the apparent consensus that public necessity is a complete defence to intentional tort liability. It identifies and distinguishes three distinct categories of public necessity: two afford justifications for trespass, whereas the third is better understood as an excuse. The law rightly bars a damages remedy when a defendant has acted in the plaintiff’s best interests or in order to protect others from a perceived threat posed by the plaintiff or their property. But public necessity is and ought to be at best a partial defence when a defendant has used a plaintiff’s person or property as a mere means for protecting the public interest. In this latter category of cases, while the plaintiff cannot resist the trespass, they must retain a right of action to vindicate their autonomy and dignitary interests and to obtain compensation for losses inflicted on them for the public good.

Speaker

Samuel Beswick is a private law scholar with primary research interests in the areas of torts, unjust enrichment, limitations, and remedies. His current research concerns the temporal scope of judicial changes in the law, as well as the rule of law in public authority civil liability. Dr. Beswick has published his research in leading common law journals, and has presented at workshops and conferences across North America and in the United Kingdom. He is the editor of the open-access casebook, Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries (2021 CanLIIDocs 1859). He has held teaching positions at Harvard Law School, King’s College London, and the University of Auckland.