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A contingent of faculty and alumni from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law will take part in a conference at the Université Toulouse 1 Capitole (UT1) on November 4. Vice Dean Max Huffman has led the development of this conference in collaboration with UT1 professor Celine Mangematin.

“It is exciting to develop this program with a leading European institution, which also has a claim to being one of the oldest law schools on the globe,” Vice Dean Huffman said. [The UT1 school of law dates its founding to 1229.] “Toulouse has an extraordinary educational program with some of France’s leading researchers, and the law school is closely affiliated with the renowned Toulouse School of Economics.”

The November program will be a bilingual conference with real-time translation between French and English. McKinney faculty will participate in a joint book publication with a major press by contributing book chapters keyed to their presentations.

Titled “Comparative Law of Business Civil Liability,” the event will feature IU McKinney faculty and alumni who have a wealth of expertise in this arena. Taking part in the event are:

• Associate Dean Tom Wilson, who will serve as panel president for the first half of the event
• Professor Frank Sullivan who will discuss the availability of damages for economic loss under contract and tort theories of recovery
• Vice Dean Max Huffman will cover competition law civil sanctions
• Professor Stella Emery Santana of FAESA in Brazil, an affiliate faculty member with IU McKinney, will talk about comparative environmental law damages
• Sarah Dimmich, J.D. ’02, will talk about civil damages in her specialty, transportation law
• Professor Mark Shope, J.D. ’12, assistant professor at Taiwan Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and lecturer at IU McKinney, will talk about pharmaceutical supply chain liability
• Danielle Teagarden, J.D. ’14, who teaches as an adjunct professor at IU McKinney, will discuss civil liability for corporate data breach
• Professor Aila Hoss will talk about liability and damages in public health litigation

In each case, a professor from France will give the French perspective on the topic, enabling a comparative study of these topics that is intended to feed the dialog surrounding eventual reform of France’s civil damages code.

The conference is a continuation of the developing inter-institutional collaboration between McKinney and UT1, which began in 2019 when Vice Dean Huffman visited in Toulouse to give lectures and meet with UT1 leadership. Since that time, Huffman and Professor Frank Emmert have participated by invitation in a conference and book project on the law of artificial intelligence, and UT1 president Hugues Kenfack has visited at McKinney to discuss collaboration possibilities. McKinney Dean Karen Bravo participated virtually in the UT1 academic year commencement ceremony, providing a video welcome that extolled the similarities between the institutions and the possibilities for further collaboration.

According to Huffman, “it is both exciting and gratifying to find a possible institutional partner with the history, reputation, and innovative culture that UT1 possesses. We are eager to see where this collaboration might lead.”