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Full-Text Articles in Law
Patient Decision Aids Improve Patient Safety And Reduce Medical Liability Risk, Thaddeus Mason Pope
Patient Decision Aids Improve Patient Safety And Reduce Medical Liability Risk, Thaddeus Mason Pope
Maine Law Review
Tort-based doctrines of informed consent have utterly failed to assure that patients understand the risks, benefits, and alternatives to the healthcare they receive. Fifty years of experience with the doctrine of informed consent have shown it to be an abject catastrophe. Most patients lack an even minimal understanding of their treatment options. But there is hope. Substantial evidence shows that patient decision aids (PDAs) and shared decision making can bridge the gap between the theory and practice of informed consent. These evidence-based educational tools empower patients to make decisions with significantly more knowledge and less decisional conflict than clinician-patient discussions …
The Unsettling Effect Of Maine Law On Settlement In Cases Involving Multiple Tortfeasors, Arlyn H. Weeks
The Unsettling Effect Of Maine Law On Settlement In Cases Involving Multiple Tortfeasors, Arlyn H. Weeks
Maine Law Review
When more than one person or entity causes injury to another, the multiple tortfeasors are jointly and severally liable to the injured party under Maine law. Maine has also provided since 1965 for comparison of the negligence of plaintiffs and defendants so that a plaintiff may not recover if his causative negligence is found to have equaled or exceeded that of the defendant. In addition, title 14, section 156 of the Maine Revised Statutes gives to each defendant the right to request that the jury allocate percentages of fault “contributed by each defendant.” Finally, title 14, section 163 of the …
A Day In The Life Of Tort Law, Douglas H. Cook
A Day In The Life Of Tort Law, Douglas H. Cook
Maine Law Review
What would one day's worth of tort law look like? We usually receive our doses of the law in measures other than per diem: by the case, by the brief, by the article, or by the treatise. There is, of course, a unity in each of those units; each one collects only those authorities that bear upon certain focused aspects of the law. For example, an appellate brief or a law review article is often a compendium of cases dealing within a narrow topical range, cases drawn from a span of many different days, years, or even decades. One way …
Constitution Day Lecture: Constitutional Law And Tort Law: Injury, Race, Gender, And Equal Protection, Jennifer B. Wriggins
Constitution Day Lecture: Constitutional Law And Tort Law: Injury, Race, Gender, And Equal Protection, Jennifer B. Wriggins
Maine Law Review
The focus of today’s annual Constitution Day lecture at the University of Maine School of Law is on the Fourteenth Amendment and specifically how the Equal Protection Clause relates to tort law. First, I will talk about the Equal Protection Clause in general—what it says, and some of what it has been held to mean—particularly where government makes distinctions based on race and gender. Second, I will discuss two historical tort cases that violate equal protection on the basis of race. In doing so, I uncover the racial history of tort law that has been hidden in plain sight. I …
Reason And Reasonableness: The Necessary Diversity Of The Common Law, Frederic G. Sourgens
Reason And Reasonableness: The Necessary Diversity Of The Common Law, Frederic G. Sourgens
Maine Law Review
This Article addresses the central concept of “reasonableness” in the common law and constitutional jurisprudence. On the basis of three examples, the common law of torts, the common law of contracts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Article notes that different areas of the law follow fundamentally inconsistent utilitarian, pragmatic, and formalist reasonableness paradigms. The significance of this diversity of reasonableness paradigms remains largely under-theorized. This Article submits that the diversity of reasonableness paradigms is a necessary feature of the common law. It theorizes that the utilitarian, pragmatic and formalistic paradigms are structural elements driving the common law norm-generation process. This …