News Archive

Professor Rodrigo Salgado, J.D. ‘22, has published a piece of scholarship titled “Risk Runs Through It: The Legal Framework for Dam Breach Failures” with the University of Louisville Law Review.

From the paper’s abstract: “When torts result from the defendant’s engagement in an abnormally dangerous activity, the Restatement (Second) of Torts provides that strict liability doctrine should be used in adjudications. However, the corresponding sections of the Restatement have been subject to controversy ever since their introduction in the Restatement (First) of Torts. The controversy stems from the motivation and rationale for using strict liability instead of negligence theory, as well as from the formulation used to decide whether a given activity is abnormally dangerous. This Article reviews the doctrine, its implementation in the first two Restatements, and its application by the courts. It concludes by applying the Restatement test for abnormally dangerous activities to a particularly challenging problem—the breach failure of water supply dams and tailings dams—to conclude whether courts should use the strict liability framework or the negligence framework for cases involving dam failures.”

Interim IUPUI Chancellor Andrew R. Klein supervised Professor Salgado’s research project during the 2021-20122 academic year. Professor Salgado is the Charles Pankow Professor in Civil Engineering at Purdue University. Interim Chancellor Klein is the Paul E. Beam Professor of Law at IU McKinney and focuses his teaching and research in tort and environmental law.