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This paper aims to analyse how the doctrine of occupiers' liability for the safety of child trespassers has been developed in English Law over the last 100 years by applying Pierre Bourdieu's theorising of the operation of the “juridical field”.

The paper presents a doctrinal analysis tracing the evolution of occupiers' liability across case law, legislation and policy in English Law and subjects these jurisprudential materials to a contextual socio‐legal analysis by examining both judicial discourse and the changing cultural and physical contexts within which the jurisprudence has developed.

The analysis outlines the tensions and subtleties of the doctrinal evolution of this area of the law and the ways in which both changes in social attitudes (e.g. to parental responsibility and children's play) and changes in the built environment have affected how the appellate judiciary have understood and applied occupiers' liability law to instances of harm suffered by child trespassers. The analysis finds Bourdieu's theorising of the juridical field to be an effective way of making sense of the senior judiciary's operation as an “interpretive community” in developing and practising this body of law.

This paper provides an empirical explication of key aspects of Bourdieu's abstract theorising and does so by analysing an area of the law that has attracted little academic investigation: whether conventional jurisprudential or socio‐legal. This paper attempts to show that it is possible (and for this analysis, necessary) to combine both approaches.

November 1, 1967 Occupier's Liability — Common duty of care — High tension cable — Agricultural show — Uninsulated high tension wire crossing show site — Flagpole being erected by exhibitors' employee — Employee electrocuted on pole coming into contact with high tension wire — Whether unusual danger — Whether duty to warn — Necessity for notices on site — Occupiers' Liability Act, 1957 (5 & 6 Eliz.II, c. 31), s.2.

One of the common law duties owed by the employer is his duty to take reasonable care for the safety of his employee. This common law duty is an implied term in the contract of employment and is therefore contractual in nature. Because of the difficulties which may arise in bringing an action in contract for breach of the employer's duty of care, the employee who has sustained injuries during the course of his employment (although he may sue either in contract of tort will normally bring a tort action.

April 3, 1968 Occupier's Liability — Common duty of care — High tension cable — Agricultural show — Uninsulated high tension wire crossing show site — Flagpole being erected by exhibitors' employee — Employee electrocuted by pole coming into contact with high tension wire — Whether unusual danger — Whether duty to warn — Necessity for notices on site — Contributory negligence — Experienced employee — Whether insufficient care taken for own safety — Occupiers' Liability Act, 1957 (5 & 6 Eliz.II, c.31), s.2.

Our legal system has a well-established set of laws and procedures for injured people to seek redress for their injuries. Over the years universalised legal injury narratives have developed. In other words, repeated applications of the law have generated standard, abstract, generalised versions of individual injury narratives. Accordingly, from any particular injury narrative, there can be distilled an “essential or abstract” legal injury narrative which is the same universal narrative that can be distilled from other like cases (Klinck, 1992). It seems likely that there are different versions of the legal injury narrative that have developed due to an accumulation of a large number of similar cases. For example, there is likely to be a version of the legal injury narrative for injuries arising out of each of motor vehicle accidents, workplace incidents, occupier’s liability, medical malpractice or defective products. However, this paper will demonstrate that underlying all of these versions is the generic legal injury narrative with particular and common characteristics. This paper develops the idea of the universal “legal injury narrative” – that is, a legally idealised narrative about injury, based on a number of implicit rules about the way injuries occur and their consequences. The legal injury narrative is the framework by which other injury narratives are judged.

Examines the question of liability for rates on empty premises in the light of an increasing number of property vacancies in the United Kingdom. Discusses the general principle of rate liability, classes of property liable to empty rates, ownership, mortgagee′s right to possession, avoiding liability, liquidation, and minimizing the empty rate. Concludes that the potentially onerous liability of empty rate has to be weighed against the loss of control by the mortgagee, for example, through a receiver.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

The purpose of this paper is to present a socio‐legal case study, examining how the legal notion of “reasonable safety” provision has come to be constructed by municipal cemetery managers in relation to gravestones and other memorial structures over the last decade in England.

The paper takes a social constructionist approach to the subject of the case study. It is based upon a literature review of relevant law, policy and guidance, and on the results of qualitative face‐to‐face, semi‐structured interviews with a small sample of English municipal cemetery managers.

The issue of memorial safety illustrates the tensions that can arise between safety and conflicting priorities, in this case sensitivity to the bereaved. The paper shows that the simple promulgation of guidance will not automatically lead to it being accepted by all as “good practice”. The interviews show how organisations and individual managers have sought to make sense of, and render workable, their legal obligations, by drawing upon, and at times ignoring or adapting, available guidance.

The interview study is based upon a small non‐random sample, accessed via a single phase of enquiry in Spring 2008. The influence of fear of liability may manifest differently in other cemetery managers and/or change over time. In view of the novel, and powerful, “resisting‐forces” in the case of cemeteries direct comparison with the risk perception of managers in other parts of the built environment may be difficult.

Given the lack of existing research in the field of liability perception by landowners, the paper contributes to the analysis of the generic processes by which safety guidance is negotiated, and reconciled with competing drivers in the management of the built environment.

A significant proportion of corporate real estate tends to be owned by corporate occupiers for historic reasons. This may be as a result of financial planning, the use of property as a hedge against inflation or the chance of capital gains from property redevelopment. Very often, however, property has accumulated through pure inertia or lack of management focus. Consequently, for many companies, real estate is not adding shareholder value and it is perceived to be ‘an operational pain’. This paper focuses on how corporate occupiers can manage the contribution their operational properties make to shareholder value.