A native Floridian, Jim attended Coral Gables High School, where he participated in football, track, and student government. At Princeton, he served on the Undergraduate Council, ran track, played varsity football, majored in English, and joined Cannon Club.
From Princeton, Jim headed to Cambridge, Mass., for a Harvard law degree. While there, he met and married Marcia Dustan. Jim spent a year clerking with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then dabbled in private practice in Florida. He went back to Harvard for a master’s degree in law and started an acclaimed career in legal scholarship, teaching law at Boston University Law School until 1984, then at Cornell Law School as the Frank B. Ingersoll Professor of Law, where he remained for 29 years.
Jim’s contributions to the field of legal scholarship are legendary and far too many to name here. As an example, his expertise in the areas of torts and products liability was recognized with his appointment as co-reporter to the Restatement of Torts, and service as a co-special master in the World Trade Center disaster-site litigation. In 2014 he received the William L. Prosser Award for outstanding contributions to tort scholarship from the American Association of Law Schools.
Jim is survived by his wife, Marcia; son James ’87; daughter Katherine Helber; and four grandchildren. We have sent condolences.