vice versa. Atiyah pointed out that if the focus of the fault principle was to punish the offending party, why is there vicarious liability, and liability insurance, which allow the actual wrongdoer to escape paying the victim's compensation. He was also highly critical of the decision in Nettleship v. Weston [1971], because it imposed liability onto a learner driver defendant, where moral culpability could not be established. The Fault principle pays insufficient attention to the conduct or needs of the Claimant. Atiyah was concerned that finding a liable defendant was held in higher esteem than compensating the victim. For example, if no liable defendant was found, and the Claimant was also wholly blameless, they would be entitled to no compensation, whereas if the claimant was mostly to blame for an accident, they would still recover some compensation if someone else was also partly to blame. Justice may require payment of compensation without fault. Atiyah quoted the case of Bolton v. Stone [1951] as an example of where a policy decision deferred a defendant's liability, and therefore the victim's payout. If there was no fault liability, then the case would not even have gone to court. Fault is an unsatisfactory criterion for liability because of the difficulties caused in adjudicating on it. The Fault principle means that one of the parties to the case must be found to be at fault, and even that can be difficult to determine because of witness evidence that has been demonstrated to be unreliable. Atiyah was concerned that if the court finds one party to be at fault, then the wider community is effectively absolved of liability. As an example, he suggested that rather than spending money, time and resources in courts to blame a driver for a road accident, society should strive to make the roads and cars safer to avoid a similar accident in the future. If society rejects this, then why should that particular driver be found to be responsible for an accident that may have been able to be avoided? See also Tort reform Notes Tort law 2006 non-fiction books Law books