Workshop Ucall &ERI: Comprehensive no-fault compensation systems

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Practical information

UCALL and ERI have collaborated to set up a very interesting online presentation, which took place on February 21st from 13:00 to 14:15. During this presentation, Kim Watts from the University of Antwerp, gave us a summarised overview of her doctoral research on comprehensive no-fault compensation systems.

Compensation funds in different jurisdictions have varying functions and objectives to remedy loss. A handful of jurisdictions have taken no-fault compensation funds’ use to their most extreme manifestation – a single publicly-managed structure that provides a wide, compulsory, and complete replacement for tort remedies. Her doctoral research addressed the significant knowledge gap in relation to no-fault comprehensive compensation funds, by undertaking the first thorough comparative law study of four such large funds. These four funds are all a type of hybrid socio-legal structure and evidence of a revolution in private law.

Her research identified the characteristics of big no-fault funds that are key to their successful establishment, administration, operation, and further development. This included analysis of the functional harms covered, quantum of compensation and funding mechanisms. Principled comparisons with selected European no-fault schemes also provided new insights. Next, there was a novel first principles analysis of the interaction between these large funds and human rights law, access to justice concepts and practical dispute resolution issues. Finally, there was an analysis of how and whether no-fault comprehensive compensation funds can be used to address contemporary liability problems, such as artificial intelligence applications and multimodality shifts in transport, and emergency public health applications.