Worker misconduct and the denial of claims under the employees' compensation ordinance

An often overlooked feature of the Employees' Compensation Ordinance is that an employee who meets the basic requirements for a claim can nonetheless be denied compensation under certain provisions of the Ordinance, if his misconduct or his contribution to the injury is viewed as sufficiently serious. These provisions are rarely resorted to, but their potential should not be under-estimated. Moreover, these provisions overlap with each other, and contain certain internal contradictions. They also overlap with and to some degree contradict certain of the provisions establishing the basic qualifying conditions for compensation. This article will explore recent and historical case law in which these provisions have been interpreted and applied, and will consider the extent and effect of the overlap between them and the extent to which they overlap with and contradict the basic qualifying conditions. Some simple suggestions for reform will be proposed.published_or_final_versio

The Sorry State of Hong Kong Labour Law

Commentpublished_or_final_versio

A frolic in the law of tort: expanding the scope of employers' vicarious liability

The traditional approach to the imposition of employers' vicarious liability has recently been reconsidered and revised by the Supreme Court of Canada and the House of Lords, in the context of employees' sexual assaults committed against young persons in their charge. Under the new, more flexible approach, vicarious liability can be imposed on the basis of a close connection between the employment and the tort. This change is more than cosmetic. It is no longer necessary to show that the employee's wrongful act was a mode of carrying out the employment duties. This article reviews the case law in which this development has taken place, and considers the appropriateness of the close connection principle to cases of negligence-based torts.postprin

The Illusion of Proportionate Libaility: The Case of the Incorporated Owners of Albert House

Commentpublished_or_final_versio

Lightweight Idempotent Operational Transform Inference in a Collaborative Editor

Per techniques of this disclosure, clients send opaque blobs of text to a server, rather than full operational transforms. The server uses the revision number received from the client to infer operational transforms by obtaining the shortest edit sequence between the received opaque text and revisions subsequent to the revision number. The techniques are particularly suitable for use in lightweight collaborative editors, such as note-taking software. An idempotency issue potentially arises when not using full operational transforms in communications between client and server: duplicate requests can sometimes result in duplicate transforms on the server. Therefore, per the disclosed techniques, the server deduplicates commands it generates from those it had generated previously. The inferred OTs are thereby free of idempotency issue

Employment Law & Practice in China

Reviewspublished_or_final_versio

A Minimum Wage Law Ordinance for Hong Kong

Commentpublished_or_final_versio

Causing psychiatric and emotional harm: reshaping the boundaries of Legal Liability

Reviews: Harvey Teff, [Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2009, xxii +205pp, Hard Cover, HK$356, UK £30], ISBN 9781841132167)published_or_final_versio

Asking the right questions: the pedagogical advantages of using media reports as assessment problems in the Law Curriculum

This paper describes an assessment practice employed in a law course (tort law) whereby locally sourced newspaper articles serve as assessment problems in both examinations and task-based assessment activities. The principal pedagogical reason for doing so is to provide an assessment derived from authentic material that is more likely to be taken seriously by students, more likely to encourage students to make connections between the substance of the law as studied and the community and the world around them, and more likely to foster skills of the sort legal practitioners and professionals actually need and use. Such an assessment strategy will lead students away from short-term reproductive learning towards more reflective learning in which they themselves make the relevant connections. It has potential for application in disciplines other than law, in particular, social science and humanities.postprin

Debt Collection Malpractice

Commentpublished_or_final_versio