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GAZETTE
JULY/AUGUST
1990
McMahon and Binchy, Irish Law
of Torts
Second Edition (1990). Butterworth
(Ireland). IRE49.50.
The second edition of McMahon &
Binchy is to be welcomed nine
years after its first publication. This
time round, this unique Irish work
on Torts has a new publisher,
Butterworths, (which acquired
Professional Books in the interim),
and is considerably changed, both
in chapter lay-out and in size -
from some 600 pages to more than
850 pages; with overall presenta-
tion and quality of printing and
binding much improved.
The second edition contains the
law on the subject up to April 1989,
with the important Supreme Court
medical negligence decision of that
month in
Dunne
-v-
National
Maternity Hospital
forming a large
part of the preface.
In legal content, as before, this
edition is both readable and pre-
pared to the highest standard, and
it contains a lot that is new. Since
1981 the Supreme Court has de-
livered judgments on a number of
topics relevant to a book such as
this, including solicitors' and
medical negligence, defamation
and injunctions; the Oireachtas has
passed the Animals Act 1985, the
Control of Dogs Act 1986 and the
Data Protection Act 1988; and the
EC Directive on Products Liability,
after a very long gestation period,
has now been born and will soon
form part of our domestic law. All
are dealt with in this new edition.
Of the authors, William Binchy
B.L. remains a vital cog in the ever
rotating wheels of the Law Reform
Commission, while Dr. Bryan M. E.
McMahon, solicitor, has recently
bravely sallied forth from the halls
of pure academia to almost full-
time legal practice in Ennis,
combined, for old times' sake, with
a part-time law professorship in
UCG. Since 1981, their respective
considerable publishing energies
are represented, jointly, by their
Casebook on the Irish Law of Torts
(Professional Books, 1983) and,
severally, by McMahon & Murphy
(Finbarr)
European Community Law
in Ireland
(Butterworths, 1989);
Binchy,
Casebook on Irish Family
Law
(Professional Books, 1984);
Binchy,
Irish Conflicts
of Laws
(Butterworths, 1988); and, Byrne
(Raymond), and Binchy,
Annua!
Review of Irish Law,
1987 and 1988
(Bu t t e rwo r t hs) -
f o rmi ng a
sizeable proportion of the entire
complement of modern Irish legal
works.
With this new edition of
McMahon and Binchy, further
impetus has been given to the
option for our law of torts to
develop its own special Irish
character, without necessarily
following the thinking of English
text book writers or English judicial
precedent.
Your reviewer has been given the
oppo r t un i ty of reviewing, in
tandem, both the second edition of
McMahon & Binchy and the
sixteenth edition of Clerk & Lindsell
(q.v. infra).
Therefore, with confi-
dence, one can conclude by
advising that it is
essential
that
every Irish common law practi-
tioner and law student should have
within easy reach the former and
most desirable
that every such
practitioner should have ready
access to the latter. One instance
of practical legal inspiration
acquired from the pages of either
would more than j us t i fy the
acquisition cost of both.
M I C H A EL V. O ' M A H O NY
I NCORPORATED
LAW SOC I E TY
OF I RE L AND
FINAL
EXAMINATION
FIRST PART
Chief Internal
Examiner
in Contract
The Society wishes to recruit a
Chief Internal Examiner in the
Law of Con t r act for the
Society's Final Examination —
First Part. Applicants for the
post must be qualified solicitors
with substantial experience in
the area of Contract.
The post provides an oppor-
tunity to work with leading
academics and an attractive
fee is available.
Applications with Curriculum
Vitae should reach the under-
signed by Friday 20th July 1990.
Professor Laurence Sweeney
Director of Training,
Incorporated Law Society,
Blackball Place,
Dublin 7.
ASSOCIAT ION INTERNATIONALE DES
JEUNES AVOCATS
A I J A
Annual Congress 1990
Barcelona
17—21 September
Topics discussed during the Congress will include: —
* Counselling clients about Franchising.
* Environmental Law — legal liability for environmental damage.
* Package holidays — liability of tour operators and travel agents.
* Recent trends in Taxation.
* How to establish a law firm abroad or a transnational firm.
* Living together or being married — an economic choice.
* Deadlock contractual clauses.
Registration date is
15 July, 1990.
Registration forms and further
information can be obtained from Michael Irvine, Matheson Ormsby &
Prentice (Tel. 760981) or Petria McDonnell, McCann FitzGerald (Tel
765881).
193