Welcome to Finding Fault

Welcome! This website contains information from a research study on the development of law in a number of European countries. The purpose of the site is to make our findings widely available, and perhaps even interest you in how the law develops and can have an impact on your lives.

The project looks at the issue of when one person has to pay compensation for his or her acts that cause harm to another in the period 1850-2000. It focuses on liability for fault. Put very simply, ‘fault’ is the idea that you have done something wrong.

On the website, you will find a host of information the first stage is the information contained in the Legal Case Studies, illustrations of liability for fault. After reading some of them, you can then turn to the Forces for Development, which offer explanations why the law has changed in our period. There is also an Overview of the whole project. To help your navigation of this site use the navigation bar at the top of the page.

On 4th February 2008 two members of the team that organised the ELD project whose work you see here gave a public lecture in Leeds. The lecture gave further perspectives and information on the material available on the site; it lasted approximately 82 minutes, and was given by Professor John Bell and Mr Matthew Dyson. The lecture can be listened to on our website.

• Listen to the lecture on Compensation for Asbestos, Crashing Cars, Bungling Medics and Exploding Boilers.

The project has been possible thanks to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK.

We hope you find the website useful and interesting. We welcome feedback: please see our "Contacts" page.