Accident Compensation System in NZ / Entschädigung in Neuseeland

The blog downwärts has discovered the most famous thing about New Zealand law: instead of everybody suing each other for accidents, there is a state compensation scheme. This is an unusual way of dealing with tort law:

Eine Besonderheit des neuseeländischen Rechtssystems ist das sog. Accident Compensation System, das deliktische Schadensersatzklagen weitgehend ausschließt und durch ein System der staatlichen Entschädigung ersetzt: Jeder, der einen Schaden erleidet, sei es bei der Arbeit, im Straßenverkehr oder zu Hause, hat einen Anspruch auf Entschädigung gegen den Staat, gleichgültig, ob der Unfall durch ihn selbst oder durch einen Dritten verschuldet worden ist.

This is usually mentioned in books on tort. Here’s another description:

As students of tort law know, New Zealand is the home of perhaps the most ambitious attempt made in any advanced country to develop a systematic administrative alternative to tort litigation. Its government-backed Accident Compensation Commission provides no-fault compensation for accidents not only on the highway but generally, and its payments serve as a substitute for conventional tort litigation, which is disallowed in a wide range of circumstances where it would be available in more or less every other advanced country. Tyler Cowen has been visiting New Zealand and rounds up various useful links on the ACC, its origins and operations, and the scholarly assessments that have been made of its record.

For the links mentioned here, click on the source above at pointoflaw.com.

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