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The standard of the reasonable person or its equivalent, in general, is used in many jurisdictions to determine fault in the form of negligence. Although the standard is predominantly objective it is also subjective in that the subjective attributes of the person against whom the standard applies as well as the subjective circumstances present at the time of the delict or tort lend themselves to an objective-subjective application. In South African law, before a person can be judged according to the standard of the reasonable person, the person must first be held accountable. If a person cannot be held accountable, then the standard does not apply at all. The general standard of the reasonable person cannot be applied to children, the elderly, persons with physical disabilities, persons with mental impairments or experts. Therefore, depending on the subjective attributes of the person against whom the standard is being applied, the standard may have to be adjusted accordingly. The general standard of the reasonable person would be raised when dealing with experts, for instance, and lowered when dealing with persons with physical disabilities. This contribution considers whether the current application of the standard of the reasonable person in South African law is satisfactory when applied generally to all persons, no matter their age, experience, gender, physical disability and cognitive ability. The application of the standard of the reasonable person in South African law is compared to the application of the standard of the reasonable person or its equivalent in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and France. Just as South African law applies the standard of the reasonable expert to experts, this contribution explores whether the South African law should be developed to use similar adjusted standards when dealing with children, the elderly, persons with physical disabilities and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An involuntary language is not only a simple euphemism denoting any absurdity, approximation or bizar expression which may belong to pupils, parents, professors, etc. These "expressions" may have both written and oral forms, they lack logic and semantic precision. The political personalities do not make an exception and we come across them very often. Taking into consideration their linguistic character, these "School Pearls", political and monocontextual, have an author and a context/text and convey expressive affective or emotional values. The pseudo-term "School Pearl" has a number of synonyms which are fixed and explained by lexicographic sources in a rather sporadic way. The article presents a micro-inventory of these euphemisms in an alphabetical order from A to Z. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point is the proposition that the constitution of subjectivity in psychoanalytic perspective is an act of violence that has a social-historical dimension. According to Freud, the truth of man is the father's truth and, in Lacanian reading, the father's laws are language laws: metaphor and metonymy. It is, accordingly, a violence of language on the human being, with historical and social effects. Thus one can admit at least three dimensions of such an act of violence of the signifier on the individual in the constitution of his/her subjectivity. From this perspective, the first dimension of violence would be the capture of the child's body by language and the second one would be the symbolic death of his father. The child need to kill (symbolically) the father, in order to confront the structural lack -- that is, the third dimension of violence -- and the Name of the Father, who supports the subject in relation to such a lack. In the contemporary world, the confrontation with the lack seems to be increasingly difficult. In turn, this difficulty could be due, for example, to the technology based on the belief attributed to the scientific discourse, highlighting the social effects of this belief in the actuality of human relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: Objectifs: L’auteur se propose dans cet article d’établir un partage clinique entre mélancolie délirante et paranoïa, en repérant dans ces deux psychoses les points qui leur sont communs mais aussi ceux qui les distinguent nettement. Méthodologie: Après avoir dressé le tableau clinique psychiatrique classique de la mélancolie délirante en nous référant à H. Ey, nous aborderons dans une perspective psychanalytique – et plus spécialement lacanienne – essentiellement trois grands points de repères qui permettent de distinguer des tableaux cliniques qui peuvent sembler parfois assez proches : le rapport à la ű faute Ƈ, le rapport à l’objet et le rapport à l’Autre. Résultats: Ces trois points essentiels nous conduiront à aborder notamment l’auto-accusation mélancolique et l’accusation paranoïaque, la position d’ű exception Ƈ de ces sujets paranoïaques et mélancoliques, ainsi qu’une certaine communauté des thèmes délirants. Discussion et conclusion: Nous tenterons enfin de savoir si, comme le postulait Freud au sujet du délire paranoïaque, le délire mélancolique est lui aussi une ű tentative de guérison Ƈ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: Depuis plusieurs années, la jurisprudence considère de manière distincte la faute de technique opératoire. L’obligation d’exactitude du geste opératoire s’est vue renforcée et depuis 1997, il semblait acquis que la faute technique puisse être retenue dès lors que le praticien « porte atteinte à un organe ou à un tissu qu’il n’était pas nécessaire de toucher pour réaliser l’intervention ». Pourtant, dans certaines situations, le dommage n’est pas en rapport avec un manquement aux règles de l’art, mais lié à une complication inhérente à la technique. La Cour de cassation avait toujours refusé l’idée d’un « aléa chirurgical » et reconnu que toute atteinte d’un organe, autre que ceux visés lors de l’intervention, révélait obligatoirement une imprudence du chirurgien. Pourtant, en reconnaissant comme fautif un chirurgien qui a respecté les règles de l’art, le juge risque de s’éloigner des principes de la responsabilité médicale. Des arrêts rendus ces trois dernières années nous amènent à rediscuter l’opportunité de reconnaître l’existence d’un aléa chirurgical. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This work considers different possibilities of evil, considered from the point of view of psychoanalysis. Evil is one of the names of enjoyment and, for that reason, it becomes necessary to differentiate defamation, base action and perverse act. Defamation, a script so vast as to become a political weapon, can justify even death, spread confusion, and is a good tool to fell the tree that offers its shadow. Every base action rests on wanting to be the Other, while the perverse act is based on an identification with the instrument of the Other's enjoyment and on the production of anxiety in the partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A surgeon''s daily practice evolves according to techniques, but also according to a legal and associative environment. The patient is becoming a health consumer, demanding and informed, legitimately exacting security and transparency, but also compensation in the event of accidental injury. The constraints that weigh upon this profession are growing heavier: knowledge and respect of laws, ordinances and regulations are becoming essential and law suits more and more frequent. Ever present in surgery, risk evaluation and assessing the risk-benefit ratio for the patient must be clearly stated by the practitioner and his team, despite the inherent difficulties in sharing information. A classification of surgical risk facilitates an approach to the definitions of a fault, medical accident, iatrogenic condition or undesirable event. This is a fundamental concept, since precise criteria apply to a fault in the legal sense, whereas no normative definition exists for a medical fault. Prevention of conflict requires the implementation of collective steps aimed at ensuring security in a complex system, confidence between the surgeon and his patient based on appropriate information and strict adherence to current regulations. In the event of complications, difficult after-effects, objectively unsatisfactory results or those perceived as such by the patient, post-operative follow-up must face these difficulties squarely with transparency and responsibility. Following a legal summons involving the responsibility of the practitioner, management of the conflict between the physician and the patient requires solid preparation of the medical file and his active participation in the judicial expertise so as to best inform the judge. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The apparently benign nature of many hand injuries may lead one to underestimate the potentially serious consequences of these injuries. In case of significant residuals, patients may consider themselves victims of inadequate treatment. The traumatic lesions may be classified into three groups of increasing severity (mild, moderate and severe emergencies) which require the services of increasingly sophisticated treatment teams: Services d’Accueil des Urgences (SAU) (general emergency care facilities) for minor injuries, general surgery emergency services for more severe injuries, and specialized teams such as the centers of the “Fe´de´ration Europe´enne des Services Urgences Mains” (FESUM) for serious complicated injuries. This differentiation is correlated to the level of expertise of the treatment team and the quality of the technical support at their disposition. Proper match of the severity of injury with the level of expertise of the treatment team can minimize the incidence of poor results and resultant litigation. Personalized treatment given with the informed consent of the patient, and his understanding that all necessary resources will be utilized, will lessen the tendency for the patient to consider some less than perfect results as the consequence of inadequate care, and therefore, lessen the likelihood of litigation against the physician or hospital. The evaluation of the permanent impairment should be analyzed as the difference between the actual result and similar, if not strictly identical cases given the appropriate level of treatment. In order to limit the frequency of litigation, including unjustified lawsuits, it is necessary, as a preventive measure, to integrate these precautions into the plan for provision of care for hand injuries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Nous délimitons dans ce travail divers possibilités du mal, pensé du point de vue de la psychanalyse. Le mal est un des noms de la jouissance, et par cette raison il y a besoin de différentier entre eux la diffamation, la canaillerie et l’acte pervers. La diffamation, argument si vaste que peut devenir une arme politique, justifier jusqu’à la mort elle-même et semer le dérangement, est un bon matériel pour abaisser l’arbre qui rend son ombre. Toute canaillerie reste sur le désir d’être l’Autre, tandis que l’acte pervers se soutient sur une identification avec l’instrument de la jouissance de l’Autre et sur la production d’angoisse dans le partenaire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]