Private Law and Building Safety

by Matthew Bell (Editor), Susan Bright (Editor), Ben McFarlane (Editor), Andrew Robertson (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays explores the real-world problem of building safety through the lens of private law.

High profile building failures including the fire at Grenfell Tower, London, England and the collapse of Champlain Towers South, Florida, USA have exposed widespread building safety failures globally. In this book, international experts deploy a variety of different private law perspectives ranging through torts, contract and real property law, to examine building safety failures across the UK, USA, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Italy and Canada. The book offers policymakers, practitioners and scholars ground-breaking consideration of this vital yet under-considered aspect of the building safety crisis, along with new and valuable insights into the nature, limits and utility of private law.

The book shows that private law can be part of the solution to – as well as being part of the cause of – the building safety crisis. Consideration is given to existing legislative and judicial responses to the crisis, offering guidance as to how statutory regimes addressing the building safety problem (such as the Building Safety Act 2022) can best be understood and developed. A central lesson is the need to take an integrated, coherent approach, within and beyond private law. The book also illustrates that an understanding of the causes of, and responses to, the building safety crisis is vital to any theory of private law: private law is unable to fulfil its distinctive and crucial role of ordering our relations, one to another, if we adopt an unduly limited view of the reasons and resources available to it.

The book results from a joint research project by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509976614
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/24/2025
Series:	Hart Studies in Private Law
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
File size:	564 KB

About the Author

Matthew Bell is Associate Professor of Construction Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Susan Bright is Professor of Land Law at the University of Oxford, UK.
Ben McFarlane is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, UK.
Andrew Robertson is Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Matthew Bell is Associate Professor and Co-Director of Studies for Construction Law at Melbourne Law School, Australia. In 2021, he won first prize in the annual Hudson essay competition run by the Society of Construction Law (UK and Ireland) for his work Contract Damages for Defective Construction Work: An Unsolvable Puzzle?.
Susan Bright is Professor of Land Law at the University of Oxford, UK.
Andrew Robertson is Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne.

Table of Contents

1. Private Law and Building Safety: Problems and Promises, Matthew Bell (University of Melbourne, Australia), Susan Bright (University of Oxford, UK), Ben McFarlane (University of Oxford, UK) and Andrew Robertson (University of Melbourne, Australia)
2. Tackling Building Safety Through Private Law: A Comparative Analysis, Fabiana Bettini (University College London, UK) and Marco Cappelletti (University of Oxford, UK)
3. The Surfside Condominium Collapse: What Lessons have been Learned? Evan C McKenzie (University of Illinois Chicago, USA)
4. The Role of Private Law in Promoting Building Safety: The Case of Singapore, Edward SW Ti (Singapore Management University)
5. Building Safety in Canada: Has Winnipeg Condominium Had an Impact? Erika Chamberlain (University of Western Ontario, Canada)
6. Defective Premises and Economic Loss: A Problem Best Left to Legislation? Donal Nolan (University of Oxford, UK)
7. Tort as a Tool of Government Policy: Section 38 of the Building Act 1984: Sleeping Beauty Awakes? Jonathan Morgan (University of Cambridge, UK)
8. Rationalising Associate Liability under the Building Safety Act 2022, David Sawtell (39 Essex Chambers, UK)
9. Procedural Challenges and Opportunities for Leaseholders, Simone Degeling (University of New South Wales, Australia) and Jodi Gardner (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
10. Private Law in the Ruins, Nicholas J McBride (University of Cambridge, UK)