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Full-Text Articles in Law
Encouraging Insurers To Regulate: The Role (If Any) For Tort Law, Kyle D. Logue
Encouraging Insurers To Regulate: The Role (If Any) For Tort Law, Kyle D. Logue
Articles
Insurance companies are financially responsible for a substantial portion of the losses associated with risky activities in the economy. The more insurers can lower the risks posed by their insureds, the more competitively they can price their policies, and the more customers they can attract. Thus, competition forces insurers to be private regulators of risk. To that end, insurers deploy a range of techniques to encourage their insureds to reduce the risks of their insured activities, from charging experience-rated premiums to discounting premium rates for insureds who make specific behavioral changes designed to reduce risk. Somewhat paradoxically, however, tort law …
What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?, Scott Hershovitz
What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?, Scott Hershovitz
Articles
It’s not hard to describe what tort law does. As a first approximation, we might say that tort empowers those who suffer certain sorts of injuries or invasions to seek remedies from those who brought about those injuries or invasions. The challenge is to explain why tort does that, or to explain what tort is trying to do when it does that. After all, it is not obvious that we should have an institution specially concerned with the injuries and invasions that count as torts.
Letting Good Deeds Go Unpunished: Volunteer Immunity Laws And Tort Deterrence, Jill R. Horwitz, Joseph Mead
Letting Good Deeds Go Unpunished: Volunteer Immunity Laws And Tort Deterrence, Jill R. Horwitz, Joseph Mead
Articles
Does tort law deter risky behavior in individuals? We explore this question by examining the relationship between tort immunity and volunteering. During the 1980s and 1990s, nearly every state provided some degree of volunteer immunity. Congress followed with the 1997 Volunteer Protection Act. This article analyzes these acts, identifying three motivations for them: the chilling effects of tort liability, limits on liability insurance, and moral concerns. Using data from the Independent Survey’s Giving and Volunteering surveys, we then identify a large and positive correlation between immunity and volunteering. We next consider the implications of the findings for tort theory and …
Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, And Disability, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Margo Schlanger
Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, And Disability, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Margo Schlanger
Articles
A number of states recognize hedonic damages as a separate category of recovery in tort and tort-like actions. Others consider lost enjoyment of life as an aspect of what are sometimes termed "disability" damages-damages for physical or mental impairment. Many other states permit juries to take account of lost enjoyment of life in setting compensation for pain and suffering or other forms of general damages. In all these jurisdictions, disability has loomed large. And the (explicit or implicit) view of disability is often one of tragic dependency and helplessness. As we show in Part I below, lawyers seeking hedonic damages …
Getting To No: A Study Of Settlement Negotiations And The Selection Of Cases For Trial, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud
Getting To No: A Study Of Settlement Negotiations And The Selection Of Cases For Trial, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud
Articles
A trial is a failure. Although we celebrate it as the centerpiece of our system of justice, we know that trial is not only an uncommon method of resolving disputes, but a disfavored one. With some notable exceptions, lawyers, judges, and commentators agree that pretrial settlement is almost always cheaper, faster, and better than trial. Much of our civil procedure is justified by the desire to promote settlement and avoid trial. More important, the nature of our civil process drives parties to settle so as to avoid the costs, delays, and uncertainties of trial, and, in many cases, to agree …