An easement occurs when the owner has the right to neighboring property owned by another person. An easement is attached to property and can be transferred to a new owner upon transfer of the property to which it is attached. In other words, an easement is granted for the benefit of the owner of adjacent property due to ownership of that property and does not exist separately from that property.
A prescription easement is an easement that occurs when one person uses another person’s land for a specified period of time during which the owner of the property does not object to the use of the property.
A church exception is also known as a “minister exception”. The ecclesiastical exemption is a legal doctrine that exempts religious institutions from anti-discrimination laws in relation to their employment relationship with “priests”. Based on the First Amendment’s protection of religious practice, the ministerial exemption is a positive defense in the event that a religious institution is sued by one of its employees who qualifies as a “priest.”
Environmental risk assessment is the application of a formal framework, analytical process or model to assess the impact of human activities on a natural resource and interpret the significance of that impact in light of the uncertainties identified in each component of the assessment process. This analysis includes initial hazard identification, exposure and dose-response assessment, and risk characterization.
Economic capital is the market value of assets less the fair value of liabilities. In practice, it is used as a measure of risk-adjusted capital; in particular, the amount of capital required to satisfy an apparent solvency constraint (for example, a certain probability of ruin).
The Economic Cost of Ruin (ECOR) is an improvement on the concept of the probability of ruin (and therefore the risk of shortfall), which also reflects the severity of the ruin. Technically, this is the expected amount of the deficit. By analogy with a bond rating, it is comparable to taking into account the liquidation value of the bond in addition to the probability of default. For insurance companies, the equivalent term is expected policyholder deficit (EPD), which is the expected shortfall in funds owed to policyholders in the event of a liquidation.
Economic damage is the award to the injured person of an amount sufficient to compensate for his or her actual monetary loss. Examples of monetary compensation include compensation for lost wages and medical expenses.
The economic loss doctrine is a legal principle that precludes compensating victims for purely economic damage if there is no contract with the tortfeasor. This argument has been used by design professionals to avoid liability for claims from contractors, tenants, and others who suffer economic damage as a result of design errors or omissions.
Economic value added (EVA) is a measure of corporate performance that highlights a company’s ability to generate returns above the firm’s cost of capital. Often quoted as net operating profit after tax minus the product of required capital multiplied by the firm’s weighted average cost of capital.