Members of the European Group on Tort Law

Professor in Law
Department of Law and Governance
Norwegian Business School
Oslo
Norway
Bjarte.Askeland AT bi.no

Bjarte Askeland was born in 1965 and graduated from the Law Faculty in spring 1991. He has been employed at the University of Bergen, Law Faculty since 1991, only interrupted by a two year period working as a assistant judge and later a judge at district county of Jæren (1992-1994). Since 2019, he serves as a judge at the Gulating Court of Appeal. In 2023, he joined the faculty of the Norwegian Business School.
He got his doctoral degree in 2001 on the subject of vicarious liability and became a professor of law in 2005. He has published a book on the topic of recourse models in Norwegian tort law (2006).
He has since 2004 participated in various projects run by European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL), Vienna, and European Research Unit Tort Law (ETL), Vienna.
Askeland is a member of The European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law, Vienna and (since 2011) a member of the European Group of Tort Law.
Askeland has (2008-2012) lead a research project financed by the Norwegian Research Council, named "The Temporal Dimension of Tort Law". He was also (2008-2011) the leader of a law committee preparing standardised rules of assessment of personal injury damages within Norwegian tort law.
Askeland is co-editor of the Norwegian periodical of tort law, “Tidsskrift for Erstatningsrett, forsikringsrett og velferdsrett”.

Uniwersytet Gdański
Wydział Prawa i Administracji
ul. Jana Bażyńskiego 6
80-952 Gdańsk
Poland
baginska AT prawo.ug.edu.pl
prawo.ug.edu.pl/pracownik/252/ewa_baginska

Ewa Bagińska (Prof Dr hab) holds the Chair of Civil Law at the School of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk. She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar (1998/1999) and NATO Science Fellowship grantee (2000/2001) at the CUA Columbus School of Law, Washington, DC. She has authored a few books on product liability, public liability and medical law, as well as over 140 other contributions in the area of civil law. She is the editor of ‘Damages for Violations of Human Rights. A Comparative Study of Domestic Legal Systems’, Springer Verlag (2016). Ewa Bagińska was a member of the Commission for the Codification of Civil Law. She is a member of the European Group on Tort Law, the International Academy of Comparative Law and the European Law Institute. She is also a member of the advisory boards of the European Review of Private Law and Wiadomosci Ubezpieczeniowe.

Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas
12 place du Panthéon
75005 Paris
France
jean-sebastien.borghetti AT u-paris2.fr
www.u-paris2.fr/fr/universite/enseignants-chercheurs/m-jean-sebastien-borghetti

Curriculum vitae

Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
Istituto di Diritto, Politica e Sviluppo
Piazza Martiri della Libertà, 33
56127 Pisa
Italy
g.comande AT santannapisa.it
www.santannapisa.it/it/giovanni-comande

Giovanni Comandè (LLM Harvard Law School USA, Ph.D. Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) is Full Professor of Private comparative law at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna where he also studied as ordinary student.
Since 1995 he has been lawyer, included in the special roll for university teachers in Pisa and Attorney at law (New York Bar) since 1997. moreover he is mediator at Organismo Conciliazione Pisa and mediation trainer. He has taught in and visited numerous universities in the world (Washington and Lee School of Law, USA; Université Laval, Canada; Fordham School of Law, USA; Université Panthéon Assas Paris II, Faculté de Droit ; Hebrew Univeristy, Jérusalem; Wake Forrest University School of Law, USA ; University of South Carolina School of Law, USA).
He has been elected as member of the American Law Institute (ALI www.ali.org) where he is an advice member for various projects such as that concerning Information Privacy Principles. Moreover he is member of the European Law Institute (ELI) and of the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law, Vienna.
He has written several monographs and numerous articles and comments, has organised 14 edited volumes. He works in Italian, English, Spanish and French.
His areas of competence include: civil law in general, tort law, personal injury, European private law, health law, private law of public administration, law and technology, privacy, producer’s liability, A.D.R. (Alternative Dispute Resolution), American law, insurance law, technology regulation.
Giovanni Comandè is founder member and President of Smartlex s.r.l., an advice and services firm that offers various competences at the service of the needs of citizens and to support complex organizations (both business enterprises and public administrations). It combines training, research and advice, developing innovative and personalised services.

Attorney-at-Law
Professor of Civil Law
National and Kapodistrian University
Law School
18, Valaoritou St
10671 Athens
Greece
dacoronia AT yahoo.com
www.law.uoa.gr/proswpiko/didaskontes-alfabhtika/dakoronia-eygenia.html

Eugenia Dacoronia is Professor of Civil Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Law School, from where she graduated and received her doctorate with excellence. She has attended several courses abroad (Amsterdam, King’s College London, Tulane University). Since her admittance to the Athens Bar in 1981, she has been practising mostly in civil (contracts and real property), intellectual property, commercial and administrative matters. She has participated as an arbitrator or umpire at national and international arbitrations. She is also a European Patent Attorney. She teaches, among other subjects, General Principles of Civil Law, Real Property Law, Environmental Law, Torts in the Legal System of the USA. She is the author of three books (in Greek) ‘Sublease of Movables’, ‘The Issue of Construction of Wills under Greek Law’, ‘Catastrophic Harms and Systems of Indemnification’ and of the book (in English) ‘Tort Law in Greece’, originally published as a monograph in the International Encyclopaedia of Laws/Tort Law. She has also published various articles and notes on court decisions (in Greek, English and French). She is a member of the European Group on Tort Law, a member of the EU Expert Groupon liability and new technologies, has taken part in international congresses as a national representative and has participated in the Trento/Torino Common Core project as well as in the Study Group on a European Civil Code. She has been a member of the Central Codification Committee of the General Secretariat of the Greek Government for several years and has served as Chairperson of the Supervisory Board of the Greek Independent Power Transmission Operator. She is now a member of one of the three Naturalisation Committees at the Ministry of the Interior, advising on the granting of the Greek nationality to foreign citizens.

Professor emeritus The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Faculty of Law
Mt. Scopius
Jerusalem 91905
Israel
israel.gilead AT mail.huji.ac.il
en.mishpat.ac.il/Israel%20Gilead/

Israel Gilead completed his doctorate studies in law, together with undergraduate studies in economics, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1984 he joined the Faculty of Law, heading the Bora Laskin Chair. In the year 1999-2002 Prof. Gilead served as dean of the Faculty of Law. He was a member of international bodies involved in the study of the laws of damages and insurance, and served as a member of numerous professional committees, including the Obsolescence Committee, the Damages Committee, and the Codification Committee, in which capacity he helped draft key provisions in the damages, remedies, and obsolescence sections in the Proposed Law: Rules of Alimony, 5771-2011. Gilead’s areas of expertise are damages law, civil obsolescence, forms of payment, the economic analysis of law, and corporate law. He retired from Hebrew University in 2012 as a Professor Emeritus and currently serves as a full professor at Sha`arei Mishpat Academic Center as well as a Director at Harel Insurance and Finance group.

Institute for European Tort Law
Reichsratsstrasse 17/2
1010 Vienna
Austria
ernst.karner AT oeaw.ac.at
www.oeaw.ac.at/etl/the-institute/staff-members/ernst-karner/

Ernst Karner is Director of the Institute for European Tort Law and the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law as well as full Professor at the University of Vienna. Born in 1969, he studied law in Vienna (Dr. jur. 1997 with distinction) and completed his habilitation in 2004 with a thesis on bona fide acquisition. He is a member of the commission for the reform of Austrian tort law established by the Ministry of Justice and co-editor of the Journal of European Tort Law (JETL). He has written extensively in the fields of Austrian and European tort law and was granted several prizes (Figdor-Preis der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften für Rechts-, Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften 1997; Walther Kastner-Preis 2005; Kardinal‐Innitzer‐Förderungspreis 2005; Brandl/Talos – Intersectional Legal Studies Award 2008; ÖVFA‐Kapitalmarktpreis 2010).

Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liabilty Law
Molengraaff Institute for Private Law
Utrecht Law School
Newtonlaan 201
3584 Utrecht
The Netherlands
a.l.m.keirse AT uu.nl
www.uu.nl/medewerkers/ALMKeirse

Anne Keirse is a professor of Private Law at Utrecht University and a judge at the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam. She is director of the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law (UCALL). She is a member of the European Group on Tort Law. Born in 1975 in Oxford, she studied Law at the University of Groningen (1993–1997), where she also obtained her doctorate and became a (senior) lecturer (1997– 2006). Before becoming a Professor in Utrecht (2008), she was appointed senior lecturer at the Radboud University of Nijmegen (2006–2008). In 2013–2104 she was a visiting professor at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. The teaching and research activities of Anne Keirse are primarily focused on the law of obligations, with an emphasis on the field of (national and European) contract law, tort law, law of damages, prevention and mitigation of damage. Alongside her academic work, she has been engaged in part-time judicial work, first as a registrar at the District Court in Assen, subsequently as a judge at the District Court in Groningen, thereafter as a judge at the Court of Appeal in Arnhem. She presently works part-time as a justice at the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam and handles cases regarding commercial law and civil law, especially in the field of contract law, tort law, law of damages, and international and European private law.

University of Innsbruck
Innrain 52
6020 Innsbruck
Austria
bernhard.a.koch AT uibk.ac.at
www.zivilrechts.info

Bernhard A Koch was born in 1966 in Feldkirch (Austria). He studied law in Innsbruck (Mag iur 1989), Tübingen (Germany, Dr iur summa cum laude 1992), and Michigan (USA, LLM 1993). He completed his habilitation for private law and comparative law in 1998. Bernhard A Koch started to work as an assistant at the University of Innsbruck in 1985, where he was awarded tenure in 1999. After two years on leave for work at the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, he returned to Innsbruck in 2003, where he since holds a chair in civil law. From 2004 to 2010, Bernhard A Koch was also the Vice Director of the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for European Tort Law (ETL). He is a member of the EU Expert Group on Liability for New Technologies and serves as the academic director of the University of Innsbruck medical law programme. Bernhard A Koch’s main fields of research are tort, contract, real property and family law as well as conflicts of lwa.

Uniwersytet Wrocławski
Wydział Prawa, Administracji i Ekonomii
Instytut Prawa Cywilnego
ul. Uniwersytecka 22/26
50-145 Wrocław
Poland
piotr.machnikowski AT uwr.edu.pl
prawo.uni.wroc.pl/user/12125

Professor dr hab. Piotr Machnikowski is the author of four monographs published in Poland and co-author of two monographs published abroad, co-editor and co-author of a commentary to the Civil Code, co-author of several volumes on the Private Law System, author of over one hundred articles, glosses and chapters in monographs published in Poland and abroad. He participated in the work of the European Research Group on the Existing EC Private Law (Acquis Group), co-creating a set of model rules of European Contract Law Principles of the Existing EC Contract Law (Acquis Principles) as part of the work on the Draft Common Frame of Reference - the most important unification project in the field European private law. He is currently a member of the European Group on Tort Law, conducting comparative law research in the field of tort law. He also participates in the work of Expert Group on Liability and New Technologies, established by the European Commission. From 2013-2015, Machnikowski was a member of the Civil Law Codification Commission at the Polish Ministry of Justice. He is also a legal counsel and acts as an arbitrator in domestic and international commercial arbitration.

Professor Emeritus
University of Hamburg
Fakultät für Rechtswissenschaft
Rothenbaumchaussee 33
20148 Hamburg
Germany
ulrich.magnus AT jura.uni-hamburg.de
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Magnus

Ulrich Magnus taught as a law professor at the University Hamburg from 1983 to 2009 and also served as a part-time judge at the Hamburg Court of Appeals (1995-2009). Amongst many other functions, he serves as the German National Correspondent to UNCITRAL and is or was a member of many prestigious international associations. He guest-lectured inter alia at UCL in London, Fordham (New York), Tulane, Baton Rouge, Prague, Haifa, Stellenbosch, Kyoto and St. Petersburg.

Catedràtic de Dret Civil
Facultat de Dret
Universitat de Girona
Campus de Montilivi
17071 Girona
Spain
miquel.martin AT udg.edu
http://civil.udg.edu/members/martin.htm

Miquel Martin-Casals is Professor of Civil Law at the University of Girona and director of the Institute of European and Comparative Private Law at this university.
He has been a member of the Busnelli-Lucas Study Group on Personal Injury in the European Union (1999-2001), of the Drafting Committee of the ‘Principles of European Tort Law (PETL) (2003-2005), and of the Stirring Committee of the Project ‘Legal Development in Europe’ of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) (2005-2010). He is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee the Institute for European Traffic Law (IETL), of the Advisory Board of the ‘European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law’ (ECTIL) in Vienna.
Since February 2009, he is co-coordinator of the “European Group on Tort Law” (EGTL), together with Bernhard A. Koch. He is also a member of PEOPIL (Pan European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers), of the French “Group Européen de Recherche sur la Responsabilité Civile et l'Assurance (GRERCA)” and an honorary member of the Spanish Association of Lawyers Specialised in Liability and Insurance. In 2009, he was elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and in 2011 of the International Academy of Comparative Law in The Hague.
Professor Martin-Casals has been chairperson of the Committee of Experts for the reform of the ‘System for assessing damages for personal injury caused in traffic accidents’, a Commission created in 2010 by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the Ministry of Justice for the reform of the Spanish ‘baremo’. This Commission prepared the preliminary draft of the Act 35/2015, of 22. September, which reforms this system of assessment and which entered into force on 1. January 2016. Currently he is the president of the Working Legal Group and of the Ex Post Assessment Group of the Follow-Up Commission to this Act. He received the Cross of Honour of the Order of St. Raymond of Peñafort by the Spanish Ministry of Justice (2015) as a public recognition for this task.
Professor Martín-Casals is a Spanish and Catalan native speaker; he is fluent in English and can use German, French and Italian with restrictions. He has over one hundred and eighty publications on Tort Law, Contract Law, Family Law and Legislative Drafting.

University of Bristol Law School
Beacon House
Queens Road
Bristol, BS8 1QU
UK
Ken.Oliphant AT bristol.ac.uk
www.bristol.ac.uk/law/people/ken-a-oliphant/

Ken Oliphant joined the University of Bristol Law School in 2006 and was appointed Professor of Tort Law in 2008. He is currently the Head of School. From 2009 to 2013, while on extended leave from the Law School, he was Director of the Institute for European Tort Law in the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He previously held faculty positions at King’s College London (1988-99) and Cardiff University (1999-2006). He pursues research on a wide-ranging set of topics relating to English, European and comparative tort law, and compensation for incapacity. He is the joint author of Tort Law: Text & Materials, 6th edn, Oxford University Press, 2013 (with Mark Lunney and Donal Nolan) and Torts, 4th edn, Palgrave MacMillan, 2011 (with Alastair Mullis), general editor of the practitioners’ reference work Tort Law (3rd edn, 2015, Butterworths Common Law Series), and editor of several books in the series Tort and Insurance Law. His association with learned journals includes the Journal of European Tort Law (founding General Editor), the Torts Law Journal (UK correspondent), the Journal of Professional Negligence and the Journal of Law and Society (editorial advisory board). He is a member of the European Group on Tort Law (and led its recently concluded project on public authority liability) and the American Law Institute (acting as an Adviser on the Restatement Third of Torts: Economic Harm), as well as the European Law Institute (acting as co-drafter of its Statement on Collective Redress in 2014).

Widener University
Commonwealth School of Law
3800 Vartan Way
Harrisburg, PA 17110
USA
cjrobinette AT widener.edu
commonwealthlaw.widener.edu/faculty/detail/26/

Christopher Robinette is one of the leading torts scholars in the US. He serves at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School, where he has received both the Teacher of the Year award and the Douglas E. Ray Excellence in Faculty Scholarship Award. Professor Robinette writes in the areas of tort law and theory. His work has appeared in the nation’s leading law reviews. He is a contributor to leading treatises on both tort and insurance law, and he co-authored the book A Recipe for Balanced Tort Reform. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Tort Law. Professor Robinette’s scholarship focuses on the justifications for tort liability and the conditions which would make an alternative compensation program preferable. Elected to the American Law Institute in 2012, Professor Robinette is actively involved in the institute’s mission of clarifying and improving the law. Professor Robinette litigated tort and contract cases for several years prior to becoming a law professor, experiences he uses to engage students in his classes.

Univerzity Karlovy
Právnická fakulta
nám Curieových 7
Praha 1
Czech Republic
ltichy AT ssd.com
komparatistika.cz/cs/people/cs-lubos-tichy/

Prof. JUDr. Luboš Tichý, CSc, studied law, economics and political science at the Law Faculty of Charles University Prague and at Heidelberg University in Germany. He also completed a residency at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in Hamburg, Swiss Institute for Comparative Law, at the Comparative Law Institute in Lausanne, and the Academy of International Law at The Hague, and as a research scholar at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1992). Before he became the director of the Centre for Comparative law (2009), he chaired the Department of Community law at the Law Faculty of Charles University in Prague (1993-2009). Professor Tichý is a member of the European Group on Tort and Insurance Law that published the Principles of European Tort Law; a member of the Study Group on European Civil Code, and a member of the Board of ASCOLA. He is also a member of the advisory board of the European Revue of Private Law, the Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht and the European Review of Tort Law. Professor Tichý was formerly employed by the Federal Legislative Council of Czechoslovakia and his previous employment history includes serving as a legal adviser to the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs and an adviser to the president of the Czech National Counsel. He is the former president of the Czech Bar Association.

Université de Genève
Faculté de Droit
Boulevard du Pont-d'Arve 40
1211 Genève 4
Switzerland
Benedict.Winiger AT unige.ch
www.unige.ch/droit/collaborateur/professeurs/winiger-benedict/

Université catholique de Louvain
Faculté de droit et de criminologie
Place Montesquieu 2 bte
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Belgium
isabelle.durant AT uclouvain.be
uclouvain.be/fr/repertoires/isabelle.durant

Isabelle Claire Durant studied law at the Universite catholique de Louvain (UCL), where she was a teaching and research assistant from 1991 until 2004. She obtained her PhD degree in law in 2003 at this university and is currently Professor at the Department of Private Law. She teaches real property law, security law and contract law. Her main fields of research are tort, contract and real property. She has also contributed to several research projects for the Institute for European Tort Law and for the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL) in Vienna where she was on leave for work from October 2004 to March 2005. She is a member of ECTIL. In addition, she was an attorney at the Brussels Bar from 1991 until 2004.

University of the Free State
Faculty of Law
P.O. Box 339
Bloemfontein 9300
South Africa
neethlingj AT ufs.ac.za
www.ufs.ac.za/law/private-law-home