One might picture the law of torts as a set of qualifications to the legal application of the principles of corrective justice, including, notably, the principle that a loss to one party caused by another’s negligence should be made good. From this perspective, the first set of categories that come into view concern the reasons for which the application of these principles might be suspended; the second set concern the considerations that, in turn, suspend the application of these reasons. In the case of the principle that negligently caused losses should be compensated, the common law of torts has recognized at least three sorts of reasons for suspension, to wit, the identity of the defendant, e.g., the historic immunity of the State; the nature of the activity causing the loss, e.g., the occupation of a premises or the public administration of the State; and the form taken by the loss in question, e.g., a purely psychiatric or economic loss. In a case such as Bates and Moore v. Minister for Agriculture, reasons of each such category might, at one time or another, have served to deny the plaintiff recovery of the loss caused by the defendant’s negligence. Crucially, it seems that any decision to award recovery to the plaintiffs must presuppose not simply that their loss’s purely economic character is no bar to the defendant’s liability in the particular case, but that such a character no longer qualifies as a bar to recovery in any case.