Joint Seminar on Tort Law
20 October 2026 (Tuesday), 5:15 – 6:45 PM
Rm 723 Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Modelling Liability for Artificial Intelligence by Professor Donal Nolan
Legal systems around the globe are currently wrestling with the question of liability for harm caused by artificial intelligence (‘AI’) systems. Who should be liable for such harm, and in what circumstances should this liability arise? Much of this literature assumes that existing liabilities are inadequate as a response to AI. In this paper I will consider the veracity of this assumption and attempt to model AI liability by considering possible liability solutions, and their advantages and disadvantages. The discussion will encompass four potential liability standards––fault, defectiveness, regulatory breach, and absolute liability––as well as the possible role of presumptions and changes to the burden of proof. I will also consider a variety of concepts and analogies that have been floated in the literature as potential solutions to the problems of AI liability, but which seem to me to be either distractions or complications. Finally, I will briefly consider who should be liable for harm caused by AI systems. My concern throughout is with personal injury, property damage and economic loss caused by AI systems in circumstances that might give rise to liability in negligence in the common law world, or liability for fault in civilian systems. Other forms of harm caused by AI systems, such as injury to personality interests, lie outside the scope of my analysis.
Surreptitious Reform of the Duty of Care in Negligence by Professor Aaron Yoong
For almost a century the duty of care has attracted calls for reform, ranging from its elimination as a historical accident to its deconstruction of the various questions now gathered under duty, to breach, remoteness, causation, damage and the defences. Running against this, the courts have been charged with quietly moving in the opposite direction, over-specifying the duty question so that cases once resolved at other elements come to be resolved through the duty analysis instead. This paper argues that the more consequential ‘surreptitious’ movement has in fact been the first. The principal case study is Deloitte & Touche v Hin Leong Trading, in which a five-judge Court of Appeal of Singapore declined to define the duty of care by reference to the particular damage claimed, on the ground that this would fold remoteness into duty, and removed the SAAMCo limitation from the scope of the duty altogether. That decision is read alongside recent English authority, including Darnley, Robinson, Poole, Paul and Tindall, and against the contrary pull of Manchester Building Society and Khan v Meadows, in order to ask three questions: what is actually being relocated; whether the relocation can be traced to arguments made in the literature or merely converges with them; and what turns on the move by way of pleading, proof and appellate control. The broader concern sought to be addressed is with the duty element in the common law of negligence and its relationship to the other elements of the tort.
About the Speaker:
Donal Nolan is Professor of Private Law in the University of Oxford and Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow and Tutor in Law at Worcester College, Oxford. He is a Professorial Fellow of the University of Melbourne, and an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of Auckland, Barcelona, Florida and Trento, and at Sichuan University and the National University of Singapore.
Donal’s research is focused primarily on the law of tort, and in particular the law of negligence, the law of private nuisance and the interface between tort law and public law. He is the author of Questions of Liability: Essays on the Law of Tort (2023); and co-author of Contributory Negligence in the Twenty-First Century (2019), Winfield & Jolowicz on Tort, Lunney & Oliphant’s Tort Law: Text and Materials and Contributory Negligence, 2nd edn (2023).
Aaron Yoong is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University. He is the principal author of Commercial Injunctions in Singapore, and a contributor on the Law of Torts in Singapore. His work has been published in journals such as the Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly, Tort Law Review, Torts Law Journal, and Arbitration International, and have been cited in judgments of the Singapore court. He is also actively involved in committee and law reform work with various governmental bodies, and external agencies such as the Singapore Academy of Law. Aaron maintains a broad commercial practice, focussing on cross-border disputes and international enforcement. He has appeared as counsel at all levels of the Singapore Courts, and has also been appointed for multiple terms on the Supreme Court’s Young Independent Counsel scheme.