J Fedtke

Charles Mitchell and Paul Mitchell (eds), Landmark Cases in the Law of Tort (Hart Publishing, 2010)

For millennia, distinct geographical features such as the silhouettes of headlands or mountains provided seafarers with crucial information about the position of their ships long after the coastline itself had receded below the horizon. Ancient Greek sailors may have been the first to keep records of such landmarks in order to navigate the Aegean Sea. The skill became more relevant as the boundaries of the known world were gradually pushed back in subsequent centuries. Descriptions of the land, navigational hazards, and meteorological conditions were meticulously recorded in handwritten journals that helped pilots find their way to and from the most remote destinations long before the development of more precise nautical charts or, these days, GPS.

Economic Loss Caused by GMOs in Germany

In 1990, Germany introduced a special legal regime for GMOs, the so-called Gentechnikgesetz, which was subsequently amended on several occasions.1 It contains the general legal framework for the development, production or use of GMOs. Like most other German statutes dealing with dangerous objects and/ or activities, the Gentechnikgesetz thereby establishes a strict form of delictual liability (so-called Gefahrdungshaftung).2 These rules, however, only apply to a limited number of facilities in which GMOs are developed, produced, multiplied, stored, destroyed or moved within the physical confines of a given research or special production site3 as well as any other activities for which a permission to circulate particular GMOs for the general use by others has not yet been granted.4 Crucial to the understanding of the current situation in Germany is thus the distinction between, on the one hand, GMOs which can potentially contaminate other crops but are nevertheless used or handled on the basis of such a general permission (so-called Umgang5) and, on the other, those for which such a permit has not been issued or which are put in only limited circulation and without permission to make offspring or reproductive material such as seed available to others.6 Only the second group of facilities or activities, which have in common the fact that the GMOs are still isolated from wider circulation, are subject to the strict liability regime of the GenTG and this mainly covers laboratories conducting research and development within closed facilities, including the sites on which GM crops are tested (so-called Freisetzungen), but also individuals or companies who for the first time put GMOs into circulation on the basis of a limited permit which does not allow them to be made available to others for (re)productive purposes.7.